In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beasts, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and the moon, man should learn.                                      Author-- Pawnee chief Letakota-Lesa

People are always asking me how I became a spiritual person. My answer to that question astonishes most people. I tell them that animals taught me! They know how to have perfect relationships, their compassion and love is unconditional and to the best of my knowledge that constitutes a spiritual way of being.

As a child I had formed an invisible bridge with my pets, a magical alchemy of understanding between us. Even though their way of communicating was much different from mine, we seemed to understand each other because of this bridge of Love. Two sets of eyes looking at each other, two sets of ears in unison, most important two hearts beating together all flowing together in an integrated oneness of knowing, being, and doing.  Of course I didn’t know at the time that there was any difference in our species, other than obvious looks and amount of hair etc. To me they were equal beings, no less, no greater. I look back and think how right children are about such things. I can remember being appalled when people treated animals with any less care or dignity than a human received.  I am still appalled at the way humans think that animals are beneath us. I’ve always felt the only limits they have as far as intelligence are the ones we place on them. The more you treat them like a subspecies it will dictate their behavior in that direction. Treat them with respect and kindness and as intelligent creatures and they will not let you down. You will be amazed at their compassion and intelligence. 

Intelligence, according to the dictionary, is the ability to learn or understand from experience, or the ability to respond quickly and successfully to a new situation. According to this definition, I have seen all animals and birds show intelligence.

Animals communicate in a mixture of body language, noises, and telepathy. Learning to listen and pay attention to what they are saying seems to be much harder for us to understand than it is for them. I had developed this rapport when I was a child. I did not actually understand nor could I put into words the process that went on between me and my animals. Much later pioneers in the field of animal communication like Penelope Smith wrote wonderful books and explained how the process happens.

Animal Talk is a title that comes to mind that Penelope wrote that details the process simply and gives the guide lines for learning. I am not going to go into that here. I would like to instead give a few of my own stories that astonish me to this day.

 A Bird out of Water:
     I had moved into my first store on Auburn Ave. in Utica. We had been in the new store a few weeks when I noticed my Blue Fronted Amazon Parrot, Pepper acting very funny, kind of like she was drunk. Her head was bobbing up and down as if she were falling asleep or nodding off. It was not normal and I know from experience most birds do not even have any illness symptoms until they are in bad shape, in the wild a sick bird is considered prey.  I was in a panic because the closest Avian Vet was down on the Taconic parkway, halfway to NY City. So I sat there asking her what was wrong. I got a picture in my mind of a fish gasping for air. The fish was in my hands; at the same time I understood that the fish was Pepper. I immediately understood, Pepper is a rain forest bird used to humidity and needs a lot of water and our new store had no bathroom in the store and we had just had the heat come on which was forced air heat. Therefore the air in the store was extremely dry. Pepper was literally like a fish out of water. I went and got a humidifier and put it close to her cage and within a few hours she was fine. I never would have figured that out without her help. To this day I have had many amazing conversations with Pepper. One in particular comes to mind, I had a realization one day that most caged birds are very sad, not all of them, but many would love to be flying free. This created a dilemma for me and I decided I was going to ask Pepper if she wanted to go back to the rainforest. I explained to her that I would take her there, trying to make pictures in my mind to show her the rainforest. I was all of a sudden filled with warmth and a wash of sheer love in rainbow colors and I heard that’s ok mom I am here for you and the feeling was the happiness she felt. That soothed my mind, but at the same time I have been loath to buy anymore cage birds, although I have had some come my way as rescues. Which leads me to my most amazing bird story that happened along time ago when I had a whole bunch of parakeets, back when my kids were little?

 Tattle Tale Parakeet
    I lived in a little house in Schuyler. I had a lovely little room off the kitchen which had great windows and I allowed my little flock to roam around freely. They were a happy bunch. I had a large ring neck parakeet named Godfrey who was the ring leader of them all and talked quite well although mostly he just wanted to kiss everybody and everything and that was his favorite word. The other parakeets were the usual small budgies. One of the budgies was a female that was about nine years old, I named her chewy as she was always chewing out the other birds.

One night I had shut all the lights off and had settled down to watch television. The only light on in the house was a small night light in the bathroom in case the kids got up in the middle of the night. Being an old house the bathtub faucet leaked too, so other than that, the kids were sleeping and all was well.

All of a sudden, Chewy flew into the living room, landing on the coffee table. She was chattering very loud and fast and I felt she was upset. I got off the couch and scooped her up and headed for the bird room. As I went to pass the bathroom she started chattering again and then I heard Godfrey with his famous, “Kiss Kiss Kiss”. I looked into the bathroom and in the soft glow of the night light I could see Godfrey standing on the faucet of the bathtub, as I got to the edge of the bathtub I burst into laughter at the sight of all my parakeets swooshing their little tail feathers in the bottom of the bathtub enjoying the leaking faucet and the warm summer night dip. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I said what are you guys doing? Without further ado, one by one, they jumped out of the tub; to wet to fly they all waddled thru the kitchen and back into the bird room in single file. Chewy flew off my hand back into the bird now knowing that her charges were all back to were they were supposed to be, she knew they weren’t supposed to go out of the room and I must have left the door open, and the allure of dripping water was just to much to ignore. I wished I had a video camera back then that would have won the most amazing animal video contest. To this day it is one of my fondest memories.

 To cold for this Pooch
     I have a little Chihuahua named peaches, a misnomer for her name as she is more like CuJo. Chihuahua’s do not like being cold and Peach really didn’t like the cold. I would be doing the dishes and she would pester me a lot and finally I got a thought that she wanted warm water. I thought this was crazy, I never heard of any dog wanting warm water and I ignored the thought, yet every time I would do the dishes there she would be sitting there staring at me and I would get the thought again that she wanted warm water so finally I gave her a bowl of warm water and she was ecstatic. She doesn’t like cold water and I have since gotten an auto water dispenser so her water is room temperature.  That thought came for her; again it wasn’t something I would have ever come up with.