I heard / read two things at the weekend that stuck with me. Tiny things. But things that seem like good detail for a story. Or possibly some sort of inciting incident.
The first was a caller to Danny Baker's show on Saturday morning. He has a cat that collects cuddly toys. Goes out and comes back clutching a soft toy, presumably thinking it's some sort of prey. Has ended up with quite a collection apparently. The local small children and parents must by mystified. I could see that as a side story in Stranger Things or something.
The second popped out as I was catching up on a pile of old New Yorkers. This bit, from a story about the hunt for a pill to replace exercise:
"Mice love to run, Evans told me, and when he puts an exercise wheel in their cage they typically log several miles a night. These nocturnal drills are not simply a way of dealing with the stress of laboratory life, as scientists from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, demonstrated in a charming experiment conducted a few years ago. They left a small cagelike structure containing a training wheel in a quiet corner of an urban park, under the surveillance of a motion-activated night-vision camera. The resulting footage showed that the wheel was in near-constant use by wild mice. Despite the fact that their daily activities—foraging for food, searching for mates, avoiding predators—provided a more than adequate workout, the mice voluntarily chose to run, spending up to eighteen minutes at a time on the wheel, and returning for repeat sessions. (Several frogs and slugs also made use of the amenity, possibly by accident.)"
I love that. Makes me want to start an artistic practise constructing and installing wild animal gyms.
