Animals were once, for all of us, teachers. They instructed us in ways of being and perceiving that extended our imaginations, that were models for additional possibilities.
Many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”
I do not know whether dogs can think, or what thinking is, or whether human beings can think. But whether human beings can think or not, I know that those who love dogs think that dogs can think. This, I am afraid, is the sum total of my contribution to human knowledge on this important subject.
Ah, to be a human, for whom bliss can be achieved by mere ignorance! Here, in the kingdom of animals, ignorance is dangerous. The poor herring dropped into the tank lacks any awareness of the shark lurking below. Ask the herring whether what he doesn’t know can hurt him.
If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.
Living within the solitude of a northern forest, I started to become aware that human speech, for all its marvels, is neither the only nor necessarily the best way for communication, that there is a wild, sensory kind of communion that is wholly trustworthy and completely honest.
Zephyr is a talker. While he has not, in my hearing, spoken the English language, he makes it perfectly plain that he understands it. And he uses his ears, tail, eyebrows, various rumbles and grumbles, the slant of his head, a nudge from his huge paw, a thrust of his great, cold nose, or a succession of heartrending sighs to get his meaning across.
The notion that speaking with animals might deliver us to some deeper empathic attunement with the natural world is relatively new. For most of Western history, we assumed that animals simply didn’t have anything interesting to say.
Yes, poor doggie, you are very stupid, very stupid indeed, compared with us clever men, who understand all about politics and philosophy, and who know everything, in short, except what we are, and where we came from, and whither we are going, and what everything outside this tiny world and most things in it are.
I knew a pair of Persian cats once; the black one always reclined on a white cushion on the couch, and the white one on the black cushion next to it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to leave cat hair where it showed up best, though cats are always thoughtful about that. They knew where they looked best.
Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.
When the horn sounded out in the town, the beasts lifted their heads up toward ancient memories. Some stopped chewing leaves, some stopped pawing the road with their hooves, others awoke from naps in the last sunny spots of the day, all of them with heads raised at the same angle. . . . But what were they gazing at?
If we don’t always understand animals, they always understand us.
Our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom—and is far more vibrant, far more holy, than we could ever imagine.
