animals | The Nervous Breakdown

Your new book is titled not Do Animals Grieve? or A Few Big-Brained Mammals Grieve Once in a While but How Animals Grieve. How come?

I wanted to telegraph what we now understand: a wide variety of animals mourn when a loved one dies. Scientists have known for years about elephants who stroke the bones of the dead, and chimpanzees who become greatly distressed at the body of a loved one. And very recently, we’ve learned from up-close observations new details about how these big-brained mammals and others, like dolphins, grieve in the wild.

Storm Warning was a beautiful thoroughbred with a challenging personality. So many things spooked the horse: umbrellas, bicycles, small dogs, ponies, even people who removed an item of clothing while riding him. Storm, as he was called, was just a bit neurotic. But he lucked out in one way: he enjoyed a fifteen-year close relationship with Mary Stapleton, who happens to be a psychologist. Acutely attuned to people’s fears and anxieties, Mary transferred her insights and calming abilities to the horse. Even as Mary and Storm competed in the dressage ring, they worked together on Storm’s fears. In Mary’s words, Storm “learned to jump and face all of his terrors with great courage.”

Your book is a synthesis of memoir and cultural critique. Why did you choose this form?

Because the material demanded it—isn’t this what writers usually say? Except in my case it was because the stand-alone memoir was going nowhere. The agents I sent it to all said the same thing: “I like it, but …” Then they couldn’t tell me what else was needed. So I hired an editor, sent her my chapters, and chewed my nails until we got on the phone. And the first words out of her mouth were, “The most interesting part of this book hasn’t been written yet.” Not what I wanted to hear when I was almost done with a full draft!

What was the “most interesting part” she was looking for?

It turned out to be connecting the dots between my personal experience and the larger culture. Some synthesizing of all those years I spent in grad school studying history and religion and anthropology.

Midnight blue water rested at the horizon under a brightening sky, framing shafts of pine and fir at shore’s edge. Here on the southern tip of Lopez Island, off the coast of Seattle, the dawn air was cool and still, the only sound a few songbirds calling far away. I headed across the needle-packed yard toward a clump of pines. The bald eagle nest was right over there, Anya had said; she’d seen the chicks fledging just days ago, and they couldn’t be far away now.

I turned my binoculars toward the pines, eager to spot that huge platform of sticks three to five feet across. Eagles use the same structure year after year, weaving in more and more sticks for support until the whole can weigh a ton or more. Surely a nest the size of a mattress should be easy to find! I scanned the trees in one direction. Nothing. Puzzled, I looked the other way. No nest anywhere in sight.

Soon my neck stiffened from the upward gaze. I lowered the glasses and headed across the thick carpet of pine needles. The eagles would have to show up soon. Anya had said they were here, so I might as well wait.

For my 10th birthday my family took me to a steakhouse. This was the last time in my childhood I really enjoyed eating meat. I ordered steak tips medium rare. Before they brought the food they brought out tin buckets full of peanuts. My brother and I finished an entire pail, cracking the shells open with our fists, crunching the remnants on the floor. When our meals came, I could still feel the empty shells crushed under my feet.

This month quite possibly marks the third birthday of my cat, Berry. Amy and I adopted her in December 2008 and we were told by a(n admittedly incompetent) vet that she was around seven months old.

We don’t know what happened to her in those seven months and we rarely speculate. She was found on the streets of Seoul by an insane American woman not long before we adopted her, and as she was healthy and fairly amicable towards people, we assume she wasn’t on the street for long. The first thing we ever knew about her was that she was playful; incredibly boundlessly energetically playful. We think she probably had a home but was thrown out on the street once she became too old to be considered cute.

This is the face of pure evil. Her name is Eddie. We call her Special Ed.

I know what you’re thinking. Ah, she’s soooo cute. Wrong. She’s deceiving. Those big dumb eyes are no more than fishing lures. She wants you to pet her, to feed her, to tolerate her. “Please,” she’s saying. “Treat me like a princess.”

Which is all well and good, you might say. She’s a cat. Cats are instinctively selfish beings. They do what it takes to make us love them, because love means food and warmth and tummy rubs. They feign interest because it gets them the attention they need.

Humans like to say things like ‘the human spirit’. They like to think it means something, that it’s what’s special about them. That it separates them from other animals. There’s that new movie out, 127 Hours, starring James Fracno, about that guy, Aron Ralston, who got his arm caught under a big rock when he fell into a canyon, and he had to cut the arm off with a really dull multi-purpose knife. The movie’s about, like, ‘the human spirit’.

Mother’s bleeding her dead children
single-celled, invertebrate
born in the water of her womb
after the Word, below the light
amniotic deaths, sand and silt shrouds
mass graves of viscous black rot

Mother’s bleeding, her dead children
finned, feathered, furred
still in the water where life began
anointed by the exhumed hemorrhage
innocent sacrifice of awakening
your sleeping terrestrial siblings

Mother’s bleeding her, dead, children
thin-skinned, thick-headed
water and oil have never mixed
excuses confuse a simple choice
eat, drink, breathe where if her wounds drain dry?
return to her—or return to her
She will welcome you, either way

What I discovered in my attempt to select books for this month’s column is that there are more books for me to read than I have time. So, I’ve decided this month’s focus would be about the “little press”. To me every independent press is a champion in its own right, but there were a couple presses in particular that stood out for me this month. While these two selections are only two among many worthy titles, I really felt like these were outstanding. I like books of all shapes, sizes, styles and (okay, sorry non-fiction, you . . . not so much) I try to be as well rounded as possible however; I do tend towards shorter books when in a pinch for time. I’ve come to learn though, shorter books are equal if not more time consuming than a novel or short-story because they are replete with thought-provoking sentences, images and often, complex paragraphs of poetry. A shorter text requires a bit more commitment from my brain. I cannot flip the pages as easily, partially because I want so much to savor the words and sentences, so I read slowly (that and I seem to have horrible reading comprehension or ADHD) and thus, a fifty page book takes me almost as long as if it were two hundred and fifty. What does all this mean? Quite simply put: Good writing is good writing regardless of length.

I confronted eschatology too young. Although benign compared to some beliefs, my Catholic upbringing placed me at the sidelines of Armageddon—strange references to a kingdom come, the Second Coming, Judgment Day. I got queasy at the mention of the Book of Revelations. Sermons and syntactically-strained Bible readings led me to infer a tremendous destructive end to all life, human, animal, insect, plant. There were drawings in books, filled with fire, angels and demons, a sea of the damned. For a child, it’s impossible to reconcile a loving Father with one who will kill every one of his children with wanton violence. Children also don’t grasp metaphor.

If I’d known the word vegetarian when I was a kid, I wonder if the shift would have happened sooner. Back then, there was no Lisa Simpson giving pop culture credence, no easily available information, and no role models in my social circle.

I was an unusual tyke in that I liked almost every fruit or vegetable I tried. Steamed artichokes, smooth avocadoes, fresh cherries with pit and stem, even maligned Brussels sprouts.

We recently went on a trip to Africa. Plane one: we booked a private plane from Jettly, that flight took around three hours to get us to New York. Plane two: fourteen hours to Dubai. Plane three: ten hours to Johannesburg. This does not include the waiting times between planes. We all hoped to get some sleep, but it is not easy to sleep when your body says that it is daytime. Victor decided that for the last flight, the ten hours to Johannesburg, he would insure his rest by taking a sleeping pill. Victor had never taken a sleeping pill before, in fact, he rarely takes any medication except the very little prescribed by his doctor.

We were served a meal. (On these kinds of flights you are served meals on a regular basis. You eat these meals because they are right there in front of you. They taste like airplane food.) Victor and I were sitting in the middle of the cabin in the middle of the plane in a four-seat row with our friends, Ken and Cindy.

“I’m going to take an Ambien,” Victor announced.

“Why?” I asked. Victor is known by all who know him as a person who can sleep anywhere at any time under any conditions.

Here is some convincing photographic evidence of Victor’s aforementioned abilities:

Victor on the bed, before peeing, after work and before dinner

Again

Victor asleep on the dog crate, after work, before peeing and before dinner

Again

Victor in the airport in Bhutan

Victor on Safari at Kruger National Park

Please understand that there were lions and rhinos and hippos and warthogs and springboks and zebras and giraffes and, well, you get the idea….

Here is Victor on the bus traveling through the bush in Africa, where we passed ostriches and elephants and wild dogs and leopards and cape buffalo and hyenas and all flavor of monkeys….

I think it may be genetic.

Poor Benjamin!

“Because I want to be sure to be rested so I don’t miss anything,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to take it with my meal.” He also had a glass of wine with his meal. You don’t have to pay for wine on long flights, even back in steerage where we were. Victor does not like to pass up anything that is free. Another thing you should know about Victor is that he is virtually never publicly affectionate. Our kids have named the hug they try to give him after not seeing him for a long time: “The Hug and Shove.”

On Emirates Airlines, there is a screen in front of each seat with hours of movies, TV shows, music and computer games. The lights had been dimmed to simulate nighttime.
I was watching a movie. Victor began poking me. I used hand gestures to indicate I was watching a movie. He continued to poke me. I told him that I was watching a movie. He poked me some more. I took off my earphones and looked at him. He was grinning.

“Let’s cuddle,” he said.

“Cuddle?” I asked.

We usually reserve our cuddling to the bedroom. We were on an airbus with four to five hundred people.

Victor became quite insistent. There began a tussle whereby I tried to hold his hands down while he made it quite clear that he needed his hands free to pursue certain maneuvers familiar to me, but only in the bedroom. Victor was amorous. The struggle went on for quite some time. It was a heated grappling. Spectators started gathering. Our group assembled in the aisle. More onlookers appeared.
We were quite the hit on a boring flight. Finally I suggested that he put his blanket over his head, which is a trick he uses to breathe carbon dioxide and become sleepy. Oddly, he reacted immediately by covering up his head. Ken and Cindy, both medical professionals, told me that he was actually quite asleep and to watch him carefully because there was no telling what he might do. Ken and Cindy and I all stayed awake to watch him.

He took off the blanket and shouted: “Argentina!” He pulled his blanket back over his head. He took the blanket off several times to meticulously bite his nails and then covered himself back up. He removed the blanket again saying: “Get in touch with Ken and Cindy and tell them it will be Wednesday, if that works for them.” Back under the blanket he went. Frequently, he would remove the blanket and either utter some gibberish or grin and wave giddily at the three of us with him in the row, eyes wide open.

After he had been quiet for awhile, I began to let my guard down and went back to my movie. Ken pulled my sleeve.

“Victor has to stop that! It isn’t safe.”

I looked at Victor. He had taken out all the cash for our vacation, which had been in the “secret” pouch around his neck, and was counting it out loud in his seat.

“Victor, stop that!” I exclaimed.

“You are not the boss of me;” he replied, “you can’t tell me what to do.”

“I may not be your boss, but you need to put our money away now.” I said. He continued to count the money. Out loud.

Ken said: “Victor! Put that away now!” Victor quietly put the money back in his “secret” neck wallet and went under the blanket again. Apparently, Ken’s advice was given more credence than mine.

This had been going on for hours. It seemed a good time for me to get up and take a bathroom break. Ken and Cindy got up and I exited that way, so as not to disturb Victor. They took up watch. I just made the turn to the bathroom when I heard Ken yell.

“’HE’S ON THE MOVE, IRENE!”

I hurried to the other aisle and found him wandering about.

“Where are you going?” I asked him.

“Nowhere. Why are you following me? he asked.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I asked.

“Could be,” he replied.

I walked him to the bathroom and stood outside. He was inside for a very long time. The toilet never flushed. I was beginning to think that I would have to send Ken or Cindy to get a cabin attendant to free him from the bathroom. At long last, Victor emerged from the bathroom. I was relieved to see that he was fully dressed, since one of the scenarios our friends and I had discussed was that he might just disrobe in the bathroom and come out buck-naked. He had not used the toilet. I can only assume he was making faces in the mirror.

When he saw me outside waiting for him, he asked:

“Why are you here? You are always spying on me!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, honey,” I said, “I’ll try not to bother you.”

I maneuvered him back to his seat and told him to sit down. He was eerily compliant. He explained that he didn’t want to sit. He wanted to take a walk. I used my ace-in-the-hole and said:

“If you sit down, I’ll rub your head until you go to sleep.”

Victor will do close to anything to get his head rubbed, evidently even while asleep. He sat down and I covered him with the blanket again. He took it off and asked:

“Why are you covering me up?”

“Head rubs are better under the blanket,” I declared.

“Oh. Okay,” he said, and settled into his seat. I buckled him in, wishing I had handcuffs, and covered him with the blanket. I stood in the aisle and rubbed his head continuously until I saw that he had finally stopped fidgeting. Then I walked around to the other aisle and Ken and Cindy let me through to my seat.

After an endless wait, the lights came up slowly in the cabin and the cabin attendants came around with another meal. Victor pulled off his blanket and proclaimed his vast hunger.

“I feel really rested,” he noted.

“Are you awake?” I asked.

“Of course I’m awake. You are ridiculous,” he answered.

He had no memory of anything he had said or done, except, oddly, the counting of his money.

It is my heart-felt advice that you should not take your first Ambien on a plane. First take it in bed, with someone carefully watching.

109 Comments »

Comment by James D. Irwin |Edit This

2009-03-04 16:57:45

Tears of laughter.

I want Ambien.

I read ”all flavour of monkeys” and thought it quite amusing. It did not adequately prepare me….

just awesome…

109 Comments »

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