How does the nursery rhyme go?  Little boys are made of snails?  I can imagine it.  The puppy dog tails wagging furiously within him.  

Thom names Ives after animals, recognizing traits.  It is the opposite of anthropomorphizing.  When Ives accepts water out of an open mouthed bottle he is a baby goat.  And because of his light tufts of hair he is a gosling.  His hair is more air than hair, still it can matt.  When he eats more than either of us, he is a brood parasite: a bird who's parents left an egg in another’s nest, our alien to nurture and rear.  He is a tiger cub in our bed in the morning, pawing us, biting our ears, climbing over the backs of us.  A jungle gym of legs.  With his blocks he is a beaver, building walls, tiring not.

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He has a watermelon seed stuck to his cheek with juice.  A black tear.

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His smell is the size of a place. 

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