I didn’t know what to do about Mr. Oliver. He refused to believe in the Pet Psychic. The short-lived show on Animal Planet had me laughing, too, but I was trying to keep an open mind.
“Look at her,” he hooted as I stared at the television transfixed. Consuelo, an animal telepath, was communicating with Miss Piles, a pony who had bitten her owner. The previously docile horse wouldn’t allow the man to touch her, and Consuelo had been consulted as a last resort. The Brazilian telepath sat on a hay bale in the pony’s stall and communed with the animal.
“She’s saaaad, dahling,” Consuelo relayed to the owner. “And she’s maaaad!” The psychic turned raised eyebrows to the barrel-chested man in the red ballcap holding the pony’s rein. “She wants to know what you did with her baby.”
The owner flushed a bright pink, shuffling around in the barn straw to avoid the accusing stares of Miss Piles as well as Consuelo.
“Sold him,” he muttered.
Consuelo didn’t translate tone of voice, but narrowed eyes indicated she was clearly the pony’s advocate. “Miss Piles says you took her baby too soon and in front of her. That was excruciating, but she feels better now that she’s told you what’s wrong.”
And bitten you, I thought.
“She could say anything!” Mr. Oliver exclaimed, unmoved. “Who’s to contradict her? The horse?”
But what if she’s right? The ramifications are enormous. Not just that animals have feelings but that they have thoughts and opinions. To explore this, I googled “Does your dog love you?” The search resulted in:
“Does your dog love you BACK?”
“Does your dog love you more than itself?”
“Does your dog love you if he sleeps with you?”
I double-checked to be sure I had typed “dog,” … but I guess that’s the point.
In graduate school, I read a short story by Amy Hempel illuminating the animal-human sensibility that broke my heart. It was about Koko, the most famous of the western lowland gorillas who had been taught to communicate with researchers using sign language.
Born in the San Francisco Zoo on the 4th of July, she’d been initially named “Hanabi-ko,” which means “Fireworks Child” in Japanese. By the time she was a year old, she was KoKo, and her caregiver, Dr. Penny Patterson, had taught her over 1,000 signs.
The Christmas KoKo was 12, she asked for a cat, so researchers gave her a stuffed toy cat, but she wouldn’t play with it and kept signing, “Sad, sad, sad.” My theory? She was signing “sad” only because she couldn’t sign “lame.”
So, for her birthday that year, researchers brought her a litter of kittens and let her choose one as a companion. She picked a soft gray and white kitty she named “All Ball,” carrying it everywhere, even trying to nurse it, nurturing it like any human mother would nurture a child. As
KoKo became increasingly renowned for her language skills. Popular Science reported that she was so psychologically human she could use language to lie. Their example? Once, she ripped a steel sink from the wall, and when her startled caretakers discovered the damage, KoKo pointed at All Ball and signed, “Cat did it.”
Am I the only one who knows that wasn’t a lie but a joke? I think it’s hilarious. It grieves me that researchers assumed her similarity to us was the ability to deceive when in fact, she was demonstrating the best of us, the ability to make another laugh.
Sadly, six months later, All Ball was hit by a car. When Koko learned of the kitten’s death, she relentlessly signed the only words she had for grief: “sad, “frown,” “cry,” “bad,” “trouble,” and the heart-breaking, “Come baby, come.” She hooted in the manner of lowland gorillas in distress, a sound much like human weeping.
Koko joked, nurtured, loved, and experienced the pain of loss as any human would. Was she the exception or the norm?
I’ve read about animals’ exceptional intelligence and emotional lives for years, and we learn more all the time– how birds show affection, how curious cows are, how octopuses play pranks, dream, and hold grudges. And, of course, how animals grieve. A mother whale carried her dead calf for a thousand miles, unwilling to let her go. Is there a parent of any species who can’t relate?
I think there will come a time in the history of this planet when horseracing, dog racing, laboratory testing, slaughterhouses, circuses, and zoos have been vastly humanized or are things of the past.
The good news? I think KoKo was the norm. Bad news? Time is of the essence. Because Koko was the norm.
In the documentary “The Parrots of Telegraph Hill,” a homeless musician begins caring for a flock of wild South American parrots in San Francisco. No one knows where the birds came from, and Mark Bittner, a lost soul himself, begins feeding the flock. Over time, he names them and learns their individual identities, the most vulnerable being Tupelo, a cherry-headed conure who has become so frail he feeds her with a syringe and cradles her in his arms on walks.
One night, Mark is reading in bed when he suddenly feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude emanating from the bird, radiating towards him like heat, a wave so distinct, so intense, that it interrupts his attention on his book, as real as if someone had whispered, “I have something to tell you.” He picks Tupelo up and holds her gently next to him in bed as he continues to read. Eventually, he puts both the book and the bird on the floor so he can sleep. But as he sets the bird down, he feels a new rush of emotion flowing like a river straight from the bird to his heart.
Regret. And resignation.
In the morning, he discovers her body, and it is Mark who is filled with regret– that he didn’t understand the urgency of her message, “I must leave now,” and that he didn’t hold her longer.
The Pet Psychic has been off the air for years, but I was intrigued by the telepath’s most impressive gift — helping animals who have died communicate with their grieving human families.
Thank you,” they said. “I know you loved me,” they assured us. Thank you so much for my life.”
Animal or human, it seems what binds us is forever.
And real or not, the pet telepath healed broken hearts. The message between all creatures–
great and small, bright and beautiful—was universally the same. Love and gratitude.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
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