Talking Animals

It wasn’t just Christmas Eve, the talking animals. The idea that I could speak with critters always lay at the bottom of my consciousness like a persistent fog that humidified and nourished my waking mind.

Banished from Eden, Eve and her husband got dominion over all the creatures of the earth, or so they have said. I think the garden gates slammed shut on that hapless couple just before the Maker could grant the power to understand their fellow creatures. Ever since, animals have survived exactly because none of Eve’s children ever learned to really listen to them. Or ever bothered to, too busy slaughtering them, enslaving them, or, I have to admit, enjoying the great pleasures of riding them, if they are horses, although I have ridden terrified cows as a child--unsucessfully--without knowing one damn thing about their thoughts.

When I looked into my hound dog's deep, brown, forgiving eyes, I felt I was almost there, at that magic point where I knew exactly what he was saying.

The dog wasn’t asking anything for himself. He was transmitting a Superior Light of Understanding. And a sweet forgiveness no human could ever bestow.

I’m sure that’s what he meant. Said.