I once adopted a chicken named Gloria who had outwitted a neighborhood of angry gardeners (chickens love scratching up plants) and animal control officers for almost a year. After joining my backyard flock, she lived in relative luxury for the rest of her days, enjoying a chicken-size swing set...

They slip soundlessly through our landscapes, cloaked in a rainbow of colors and patterns that help them become one with bark, rocks, leaves and soil. Often the only sign of their existence is what they leave behind: ghostly shed skins imprinted with shapes of eyes and scales, traces of pigmentation...