Location Taken: Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, Illinois
Time taken: April 2008
Sometimes you find animals in the oddest places. Like inside a store, or in this case, a conservatory (that’s a glorified greenhouse, by the way).
I’d gone to this conservatory with my class during the Urban Studies program I was in. It’s one of the really nifty things about Chicago, so of course it made the list. I don’t recall what we had to do aside from wander around and just look at the plants. The plants were distracting enough, as was taking photos of them.
And then, in a room filled with palm trees and similar tropical plants, I saw movement where I did not expect it. And there, hidden in the leaves, was this cat.
It was not a friendly cat, but then, few cats are. Perhaps he was wild, or a pet kept to keep down pests in the place. In either case, he quickly spotted that I was looking at him, and froze. We stared at each other for a while, and finally he decided I was not about to eat him, and nonchalantly wandered across the path to a different room, one filled with mosses and ferns that he easily hid himself in.
But still, for five minutes, there we were, woman and cat, staring at each other.
