This week, you will concentrate your observation on animal and plant life, or evidences of it, in your chosen space. You will write a description of what you observe that suggests there have been other visitors to your space.

You may, or may not, have seen animal and bird life in your chosen area. But it is there. No matter how urban your selected site, there will be life there beyond the plants that you have already observed.

It is possible that you will observe actual wildlife-or even "tame life," in the sense of neighborhood dogs or cats entering and leaving your space. You may also see birds on occasion. Insects, too, may be visible, or small rodents like squirrels or mice. If you happen to observe such visitors, observe how they move and act, and especially how they interact with you.

More likely, the local wildlife will not be visible at the moments you visit.

To detect these visitors, you will have to look for evidence. Most obvious is what is called "scat," the results of an animal's defecation. Those who live in the woods or near wilderness become expert at detecting animal movements through examination-don't be alarmed, it's usually only visual--animal scat. Noticing bear scat, for instance, can save you not only from a potentially unpleasant encounter, it may save your life.

City dwellers often have a conditioned reflex to the presence of scat, especially dog scat: it repulses them. But this week, pay attention to any evidences of animal scat in your area. Try to look at it without prejudice, just as information about an animal's passing.

In addition to this evidence, animals and birds leave other traces of their presence in your space. There may be feathers, or bits of a nest; there may be broken bones where a dog has munched a lunch, or small mouse-paths through a lawn. Observe your area carefully to detect whether there have been other visitors who have left traces of their passing.

This week's writing assignment is a description of your search for traces of animal life. Thus if you do not find animal life, you can still complete the assignment.

Your writing this week will be personal, in that it will be written in the first person; you will describe your own actions and thoughts as you search for evidences of animal life in your area. Your challenge in this piece of writing is to evoke for the reader what it was like to undergo your search. Keep labeling words out of your prose; rely instead upon sensory details that will bring the search alive for your reader.

At the same time, you will be sharing your own inner responses, which will make this essay somewhat different than the others you have written. Try to avoid sentimentality, which is defined in literary terms as "unearned emotion." Don't worry about what you believe your reader wants to hear (the bunny is cute, the dog scat is smelly). What did you really experience? What did you really think and feel?