A Way with Animals
by Charles Langley
I make no claim to sainthood, but St. Francis of Assisi and I have something in common. We have a way with animals.
My first pets were twin kittens. They came running so fast when I whistled that they would tumble over each other. If I called, “Kitty, Kitty”, they ignored me. In the morning my mother would open my bedroom door when it was time for me to get up. The kittens would take turns placing their paws on my face and rocking back and forth until I woke up.
When I came home from work I would sit in an armchair to read the paper. The kittens would perch on the back of the chair and run their claws through my hair. I guess that’s kitten sign language for “I’m glad you’re home.”
Once a giant mastiff greeted me with growls and bared teeth when I went to deliver work I had typeset for a junk yard owner. He strained at his heavy chain in an effort to dismantle me.
“Don’t get anywhere near that guy,” the owner warned me. “He’s my security system. He don’t like nothing or nobody.”
Waiting for an okay on the copy, I went back out and talked to the dog. The barking and the effort to get at me stopped. By the time I was ready to go he was straining at his chains again. But his tail was wagging. If he had been free, he would have gone home with me.
They tell me that some people give off an odor detectable to animals that tells them you are afraid of them. If you fear them, you are a potential enemy and they treat you according. Absence of fear leads them to believe you are no threat to them.
I started on a career as wild animal trainer with chipmunks. I got as far up the scale as squirrels before deciding to quit while I was ahead.
The first time I saw the chipmunks that were to become my good friends they were pink, hairless little creatures no bigger than the end of my pinkie. I uncovered them in my backyard shed. The mother came back, detected the odor of an enemy and moved them elsewhere. When I saw them again they were almost grown. I started by leaving peanuts for them. Then they would come to where I sat in the yard and gaze up at me. One that I named “Toughie”, would jump up and nip at my finger when he wanted to attract my attention. Then he and his sibling would come up on my lap to be fed. I taught them to look in my shirt pocket when I said “peanuts”. When they were fully grown, they never traveled together again. Chipmunks are solitary little fellows and compete for territory.
When Chip saw another chipmunk approaching while he was on my lap he would jump down and fiercely rout the intruder. I would yell at him to stop, to keep either of them from being hurt. He finally got so he would stop in his tracks, turn around and glare at me, before coming back and resuming his peanut pick-up.
Chip was still with me five years later when I was ready to move to California. He had gray hair around his ears and the tip of his tail was gone in a fight with another chipmunk, but he was more alert than I was. The nature books give chipmunks in the wild two or three years of life. But good friends and good feeding lengthens the life span.
Squirrels are beautiful, graceful, creatures when you see them swinging from limb to limb or leaping through the air. On the ground they lose that grace and lumber clumsily along. I had two that would come all the way across the yard when I called them. They would then go up to a feeding platform in the tree to await their meal. Once, I reached up to add another peanut to the pile and the squirrel misunderstood my move. He struck out viciously to protect his treasure. If he had hit me, I would have been seriously injured. This taught me a lesson: friends or not, wild animals are still wild animals. After that I would have them go further up the tree and not come down until I called them.
Wild rabbits are more wary. Their defense methods are minimal so they don’t get too close. I liked it that way. I didn’t try to get them to trust humans, because I didn’t want anyone to take advantage of that trust. But a mother rabbit got friendly enough to sit under my chair and nibble grass while I was reading.
Once I lifted the leaves of a strawberry bush in my garden and saw four tiny bunnies. Here too, the mother took them away when she detected human scent. When they were older, they would string out behind the mother when she was searching for favorite herbs in the lawn. Once a baby animal is weaned, its mother turns it out on its own. Three of the young rabbits accepted this and went on their way. The fourth one, runt of the litter, refused to give up. He would come sneaking back up to his mother. She would turn and chase him away, only to have him go through the same action again. It made me sad, because I understood his reluctance to go out in that hard, cruel world alone.
Blue jays are aggressive birds, and one was so jealous that the chipmunks were being fed that he tried to attack Chip. I shielded my little friend with my hand, but that didn’t solve the problem. I finally had to bribe the bird with peanuts from my hand, then the two could survive collaterally.
One day a stranger showed up at my door. ”I hear you have chipmunks as pets.” he said. “May I see them.” I suspect he was from the SPCA, ready to ticket me for caging a wild animal. When I called to Chip and he came scampering from his hole and climbed on my lap, the stranger turned away, shaking his head.
Down in the Virginia mountains before breakfast one morning, I encountered a wolverine, surely the fiercest of all North American animals.
“I wonder if I can make friends with that guy,” I said to my wife. “I’m sure you could,” she replied, “but you don’t have time. Come on in and get your breakfast.” I did, and therefore I am.
Looking back at some of these stories, I find them hard to believe, even though I know they are true. I wonder if my memory is slipping and my imagination is filling in details. But each time I halfway come to this conclusion the ghost of a furry little critter pokes his head out of my shirt pocket. “Don’t change a word of it,” he tells me. “That’s the way it really was. I know. I was there.”