There’s a line in Nora Ephron’s 1983 novel Heartburn: “Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole.” GREAT. Now the ghost of Nora Ephron thinks I’m an asshole.

Here’s to everyone who experiences a little dip in mood when autumn comes. Although I know it’s (ridiculously?) sentimental, I just can’t help but contemplate mortality when everything in nature starts decaying. The good news is that if falling leaves make you sad, adorable animal videos and funny-looking bugs can make you happy, which means there are prompts for good cheer all around us in the wild world. See? There’s both upside and downside to seeing the humanity in nature and the nature in humanity. (I think Nora would have understood. I really do.)

Anyway: I wrote about all that and more for The Paris Review. Much to my extreme joy, I also got to illustrate the essay. Click over if you’d like to see a cartoon picture of a cow being rescued by a helicopter! You can see this pig, too:

(PS: I also turned the helicopter-cow picture into an installment of #WildLifeCoach, the new cartoon I’ve been drawing and posting on Instagram. You can follow it here if you’d like to see happy little animal doodles in your insta timeline.)