Issues — Animals in the Human World

We love birds for their beauty, their feathers, and their flesh, but what do we really know about these light creatures that seemingly float so effortlessly above us?

I had been surprised days earlier when I found gray fur on one of the traps, from a now partially bald mouse who had a story to tell his many buddies, but here was something worse: not an uncaught rodent, but a half-caught rodent.

Insects may be the perfect villains, but there are inherent problems with casting insects as the bad guys with whom heroes must do battle.

Shuffling through the vaccination and microchip records, reading the myriad names, I sometimes smile with nostalgic fondness, but more often my eyes mist as I am reminded of the multitudes we have loved but lost.

In a number of ancient traditions, the world is believed to rest on the back of a giant turtle, which leads to the epistemological question of what might be supporting that turtle.

“The Dogs’ Office”

In some sense, animals may possess a more instinctive humanity than we do. The world is our classroom, and all its inhabitants are our teachers.

Our alienation from fishes stems from the fact that they have existed, both literally and figuratively, beneath the surface of our awareness. Gaze over a lake, a river, or an ocean, and while there may be legions of fishes carrying on with their lives within inches of the surface, we witness nothing of it.

An incomplete listicle of how we think about animals.

Mascots in sports–especially animal mascots–create a vision that fans imagine as reality until it becomes tradition. A mascot is a stand-in for how we see ourselves, if only for three or four hours on a Saturday.

“The Dogs’ Office”