TITLE: Starry sky dolphin

DESCRIPTION: A bottlenose dolphin jumps across the surface a body length in front of me. I am hardly immune to its grace, firstly drawn to the silky gray skin drawn tight over eighteen-inch long cheeks. The siren calls. If only I could draw close enough to rub my hand along its long cheek. I would be satisfied to do it just once. The animal is staring right at me. It's flat eyes are located on the sides of its head, but arranged in such an ingenious manner that the animal seems able to look forward stereoscopically, as well as sideways. Directly above and between the eyes emerges a domed protuberance the size of a large cantaloupe, and appropriately called a melon. I know enough dolphin physiology to identify the melon as a fatty lens used to focus echolocation clicks. Having spent the past twenty-four hours listening to a discussion about the psychic abilities of dolphins, it is easy to understand how anyone might interpret this clicking sense organ to be a third eye, the seat of telepathic communication. The dolphin exhales, a sound more reminiscent of a luffing sail than of the cavernous sonorities produced by humpbacks or grays. Although I'm aware that evolution has rotated the dolphin's skull 90 degrees to our own, observing the blowhole's position near the back of the head remains a disorienting sight. If my nose grew between my shoulder blades, why not toes on my knees, or ears sprouting from hips. A sharp one-second sucking sound followed by the clack of its air valve closing, tells me that that this dolphin is about to dive. I stick my head into the water, watch it barely flick its flukes to glide smoothly toward the open sea. (From The Charged Border by Jim Nollman [Holt]).