You know what I have a problem with? Every creature but us. With their membranes and slotted eyeballs, they make almost no sense. I couldn’t know a speck of what a chicken knows, or how to see through the eyes of a millipede as it clatters over fallen leaves. I can write as many times as I want that I lay my loving ear against the bark of a big old cottonwood in winter and imagine a grandmother dreaming, but that’s me imagining a tree asleep.
You see a spider crawling up your leg. You think you see what a spider sees? With all eight or twelve or ten-thousand eyes, pore-hairs sticking out of its legs transferring more neural information than humans get through their retinas, do you have any sense of this animal? You flail to get the thing off, no thought but, eeeew!
I hate how they put us in our place.
Deer stare at us as if we’d smeared feces all over ourselves and we’re parading around naked. You can see it in their eyes. They are disgusted.
Rats, raccoons, and squirrels nod like they know us, which can be off-putting. Have you ever thrown a rock at a squirrel to get it out of the garden? You miss, because you really don’t want to hit creatures fending for their families, going through their daily grind, which sometimes involves encounters with deranged, boulder-throwing giants. The squirrel stands on hind legs, little claw-paws hanging, looking at you unfavorably.
Anthropomorphizing is said to be a terrible quirk of our species, and maybe it’s true. Maybe we are the only lonely ones, the brazen pinnacle of every living thing, and nothing else is remotely like us.
Some animals I know. The scummy ones. We have something in common, talking points. You see the way ravens and magpies look at us; they’re indignant, repulsed, slightly curious.
I sidled up to a raccoon one afternoon in Central Park. We were crossing a wooden bridge at the same time over a small lake just down from the Ramble. It moved with purpose, like a dog in a Mexican town, on its way somewhere. Plump, the size of a throw pillow, the raccoon turned onto the bridge, giving me hardly a glance. It knew all it needed to know about me. For a few strides, we walked side by side. Wood planks ticked under its claws, and the soft pads of its hands and feet sounded like little slippers. Only one person was on the bridge approaching us, her eyes widening as they landed on the trundling beast. She backed against the ornate concrete balustrade, her hand reaching blindly behind her. She certainly feared other creatures, a thing this species would be wise to do. The raccoon did not look at her, did not care, as she got her foot into an eye hole in the railing. She pulled herself onto the thick handrail and held onto a mounted planter to keep from falling into the lake. As she stood gripped to the planter, teetering over the water, I passed her and said, “The fish will eat you.” She glanced at me with confusion and fear, no safety in my company.
It was an asshole thing to say, but I had to. True story.
We all find it a little weird being together, but we’re getting along, at least this group of us, ravens, squirrels, rats, raccoons — scavengers, trash-eaters.
I do have an affinity for songbirds, too. I can never ignore the canyon wren with its cascading voice. I wouldn’t profess to being a songbird myself, but I hear something in their calls that sounds like language.
Or listening all night to a mockingbird out the window. The bird is nearly manic, like Mozart pouring out sheet music. I feel as if I’m in brilliant company, even though I wish the bird would shut up.
The rest, the oozing masses of cells and lung-holes pumping oxygen into the air, I appreciate your existence, but I can hardly tell if you’re alive. Green ooze, stromatolites in shallow water, black slick on a wet river rock. The fact that you are cogitating and breathing is creepy. You have a plan, each of those cells chattering away with the others, DNA moving like flirtatious notes under the desk. It makes my skin crawl.
If I had to hazard a guess, I believe I’m creeped out because I have skin. I have blood. I pulse, throb, and fall into nightly stupors. I am one of them.
Maybe this is what bothers me. They show us what we are. We prefer seeing ourselves in statues bright in the sun, noble and all, something to aspire to, but, really, we’re just another beast nosing into the world.
We are them. They are we. We are us.
Art: Ernst Haeckel, Cystoidea, Extinct, http://biodiversitylibrary.org
Can’t get enough Snark? Why not graze on the terrifying tales of Snark Weeks past:
Snark Week 2018, featuring the hidden burrowing owl mafia, fluffy cyptokitties, the entire insect class, putrid petrifying petrels, and worst of all, the American gray squirrel.
Snark Week 2017, featuring abusive blackbirds, an immense, near-spherical raccoon, and the vile creature that will gnaw on your soul – and then poop on it.
Snark Week 2016, featuring testicle-eating assassins, chihuahua terrorists, raptors who dole out violent haircuts, and the animals so vile they come out of the womb with horns.
Snark Week 2015, featuring flesh-ripping alien fleas, bovine murderers, and the unfairly beloved animal whose terrifying extra neck vertebrae allows them to turn their terrifying neckheads 270 degrees.
Snark Week 2014, featuring squirrels hell bent on world domination, more feral roosters, and a furry virus that has spread across the United States to total devastation.
Snark Week 2013 – the very first! – featuring the ant that kills cows, the bird responsible for five deaths and $425 million in damages, and an animal so vicious he is known only as Little Red Bastard.