Sidewalk art

You know those tarry black blobs that dot the sidewalks in every town big and small? My mom swears they are expectorated gum. And maybe she’s right. Still, hard to imagine the size of the child’s mouth that chewed this six-inch-long gob, then spit it out and somehow achieved that suggestive sausage-shaped appurtenance. Or the clean-minded artist who, resisting the obvious, turned the whole business into a cat.