I know I'm going to shoot a leopard.

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

I went to South Africa on safari and came eye to eye with a beautiful leopard. We were so close; I was staring at him for a long time and I felt a recognition with my own nature.

I didn't have cable television growing up; there were only six channels you could watch then. The only really good channel was channel 10, and they would play 'The Nanny Called Fran' every night for years. I've seen every episode 100 times. I would get my Grandma to make me leopard skin dresses on her sewing machine.