We’ve all heard of a parliament of owls, a gaggle of geese, and a murder of crows. But what about the creatures on this good semi-green Earth who lack a collective noun?

1. Steel-toed rubber boots. Because nothing says “Thank god!” more than not breaking a toe as a cloven hoof stamps on your foot when you’re ankle-deep in cow manure.

If you’d asked me before I had kids whether I would want kids with imagination or “normal” kids, I’d have said imaginative kids. Who wouldn’t?

1. Game of Phones, by Sprobile Verizatt

2. Don’t They Know It’s All Their Fault?: Cutting the Ballast from America’s Rise, by Malwasse Wright

3. What the Monkey Thought, by Pitter Patterson

I woke up in the water, well below the surface but still in the light. When I breached, I gasped and looked for safety. He was floating not too far from me, leg up on the back of the IKEA couch, his hand in a bag of chips, passed out. Even as I swam over to him, calling his name, he didn’t wake up; not until I almost tipped the thing climbing on.