ESSAY - unpublished

 I made a decision a while back. It had to do with a burden of defensiveness and a kind of subtle guilt, both placed on my shoulders by other people...people who do not love animals, to be exact.

For as long as I can remember, I have been preoccupied with all kinds of animals, all types of living creatures and their behavior. They have a very respectable scientific name for it...Ethology. But asking and wondering why animals behaved as they did was somehow subtly frowned upon, simply something that little girls shouldn't concern themselves with. Thus, because I simply could not stop "observing" animals and was fascinated by what I saw, I developed guilt feelings about behavior that was not quite, it seemed, acceptable.

As time went on, it became socially acceptable in my world for me to "observe" animals, but there was a certain taint attached to "loving" an animal. This was not in my immediate family, but certainly in my social circle. At that point, I slipped across the borderline of proper, and became a "closet animal lover" to avoid the type of superior ridicule reserved for animal "nuts."

I discovered that I truly loved certain animals and, judging by their behavior, they loved me in return. On that score, my opinion is final and irrevocable. I have enjoyed loving relationships with horses, goats, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, and birds, and I am sure that each of them, in its own way, true to its own species, felt affection for me in return.

I once had a year-long, quite respectful relationship with a large, green praying mantis. There was no love involved, but we spent many hours observing each other. This was made convenient by the fact that it lived on the lamp shade over the fish bowl in the front room. I don't know how long the relationship might have continued, but it ended when it fell into the fishbowl and drowned.

I did not name the mantis. I was truly impressed with this eating machine, truly grateful it wasn't any larger. There was something very intimidating about the way it moved toward me, not away, when I did something around the fishbowl, as though defending its lamp shade home. It turned its head to watch me as I moved around the room. In other words, the mantis was as aware of me as I was of it. And I still have the very uncomfortable and unscientific notion that insects should not have necks.

Some of my friends avoided visiting me during what they called "The Year of The Mantis". Yes, they made me feel defensive and guilty about it, but I was also irritated. Why? Because it was a repetition of childhood experience. I was outnumbered by people who found something wrong, not proper, about a person who allowed a mantis to live in the house. Looking back, perhaps I was as sharp in my reaction as they were. We simply held mutually exclusive viewpoints.

Of course, one friend refused to come into the house because I had two tarantulas in a fishbowl on the mantel. I moved them to the bedroom out of courtesy because she had traveled four hundred miles to visit, but when the telephone repairman ran from the house in nothing less than male hysterics, and refused to work on the bedroom phone until they were removed, I gave in and turned them loose. Principles sometimes get a little bent when dealing with practical matters like relatives and telephones.

Again, looking back, my parents must have been more tolerant than I realized. How could they have survived otherwise? But there were some embarrassing incidents across the years. One involved a two foot long Gila Monster, a very large lizard native to the southwest, getting loose in the house and crawling across our minister's foot. Another occurred when my mother found frog eggs in the freezer. Everyone survived, of course, but the disapproval level was very high, and guilt feelings exacerbated by "incidents" of this nature.

Across several years I suppose I am responsible for "contaminating" another generation: I introduced various children to animals of all kinds at an early age, and from me they learned that it is all right to love an animal.

Loving an animal. That is the subject of my declaration of independence, my freedom to love an animal without feeling guilty, without apology.

Here is what brought it about:

I was sitting in a veterinarian's office when an elderly man came in with a very old, feeble, mixed-breed dog. I knew why he was there...the pain was etched on his face and his hand never left the dog, stroking, caressing, soothing in a way time had made familiar to them both. He went in with the dog...and came out alone. I followed him out to his car. He was leaning against it crying.

" He was just an old mutt," he said apologetically. "Just an old mutt, but I loved him." Tears streamed down his face.

I understood, oh, how I understood. After he blew his nose, he looked at me, thoroughly embarrassed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know a person ain't supposed to love an animal like that. But he was my friend for fifteen years, and he was all I had."

That then was my epiphany: A broken-hearted old man who had lost his only friend was apologizing for his grief over his loss.

" You ain't supposed to love an animal like that."

And I respond: Who said so? Who made that rule? And having asked the question, I discovered the answer. The people who made that rule were the people who had never truly loved a particular, individual animal. These are the people who condescendingly remark, "What's all the fuss about? It was only an animal."

For me there will never be such a thing as "only an animal". Every living creature has identity and personality as individual and unique as your own fingerprints. With some, you maintain a respectful distance. With others, you interact with affection...and sometimes love.