I saw the Walking Lady this morning but she was petting a guy’s dog and didn’t notice me as I walked past. It turns out that she feeds dogs as well as birds. A real Earth Mother. A little farther along I met a “quality woman” with an enormous prancing poodle on a leash. That thing was manicured, with no end of pompoms and filigrees and poodle puffs and the like. I heard a voice in my head say, “What a magnificent creature!” I was pretty sure the voice didn’t mean me, so I stepped aside as the two of them approached, then caught a whiff of both the grande dame’s and the grand dog’s perfume as they left me in their wake.