He thought a bit, raising a flexible eye toward his crest. “Yes. Even I fell in love once. But I have to say, I never understood with whom. And then I never succeeded in telling her apart from the background. And then I got terribly jealous. If someone brushed a branch, I thought he was feeling up her prehensile tail. If he licked dew from a leaf, I thought he was sucking her ear. If he sighed over the view . . . well, I saw the worst implications. Luckily, love is a thermal phenomenon, Visko?, and we cold-blooded animals only have to worry about it between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.”
