Ummm… I talk to almost all animals I meet. (mammals) Dogs, rabbits, squirrels, cats, moose, big horn sheep and mountain goats… crows and robins, and more.
So I’m not the only weird one who talks to animals I meet?
There’s a gecko that calls out to me every evening. I speak to it sweetly, and it seems content to go about moth-hunting. If I’m in the kitchen it calls quietly. If it hears us talking in the dining room it yells louder.
I talk to birds also. Magpies often sing back to me, we wait for each other to finish our particular song or chat, and the other continues.
One day a crowd of pesky golden-eyed mynah birds were harrassing a couple of doves , who were nibbling grass seeds in mynah stolen territory. I scolded them, and everyone flew up except the obligatory boss mynah, which muttered something or other to me. “The doves have as much right to eat here as you have”, I said reproachfully. Boss bird flew up into the tree. I looked back some distance along the street at park’s end, and the doves were still feeding, with no sight of the mynah community.
Another day, I encountered a family of magpies, where Dad magpie was standing over a grown chick whose feathers were almost turned from youngster brown to black-and-white. The fully-grown chicks stay with their parents for weeks after they leave the nest, and until the chicks learn all the ropes the parents care for them and continue to feed them in response to an amusing appeal.
I walked over to the family, and said with protest in my voice, “Why are you doing that, why are you scolding your kid?” The maggie stopped, looked up at me and patiently said some kind of patient magpie sentence that for all the world sounded like a reasonable explanation ( which sounded like, "The kid has to stop begging for food. He’s old enough to do his own hunting.) "Then the magpie finished his reprimand and the youngster hopped onto his feet and began fishing for worms himself
It is weird talking to animals, or is it weirder thinking we understand each other sometimes?
user I went all in, wore my suit to the shaving, and basically did a Professor X (from the X-Men) cosplay. Got lots of positive reactions on my Facebook page. So I got shaved again for Halloween last year and went as Prof. X to a Halloween dance.
