I’m not sure what this post is about, but my experiences of
being eye to eye with nonhuman creatures have been accumulating. Here are some
of them.
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| From Alexas-Fotos, Pixabay |
During my first visit to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala
in South India, I took a walk through the city-owned zoo. I was alone, with
Indian families walking in front and behind me. When I came to the gorilla
enclosure, which was no more than a concrete cage with bars on three sides, the
animal rested in a small niche in the center of the back wall. All of a sudden,
the animal rushed to the bars and stared at me. I wasn’t alarmed because there
were those bars between us. As I walked on the animal followed me, moving from
bar to bar until I disappeared around the corner. His face was barely three
feet from mine, and he watched me every step of the way. Perhaps I smelled
different or looked different. His curiosity was palpable, and I kept wondering
what he was thinking.
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| From Stux, Pixabay |
I often encountered goats during my visits in India and at
farms here in New England. Their eyes, close up, are creepy. That’s the only
word for it, from a human perspective, but the design has a purpose. The black
slit in a yellow iris gives prey, like goats, a wider swath in which to spot
predators but for the human the eye of a goat looks strange and weird. It’s
hard to know what a goat is thinking when you’re eye to eye with it.
The eyes of parakeets don’t seem especially unusual, but I
found myself eye to eye with an immature grackle when the bird managed to get
inside the house through a tear in a screen window. It then somehow got between
the upper sash and the half-opened lower one. And it couldn’t get out. As I
tried to lower the sash to let it fly free, the bird struggled and made things
worse, leaving me staring in the young bird’s black eye. Did it know I was
trying to help? Somehow the bird managed to get out and found itself sitting on
the windowsill before a now open window. It ruffled its feathers, and flew off
into the back yard, its moment of terror forgotten.
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| Dakshini |
One of the most moving encounters occurred in 2014, on my last
visit to South India. On the way to a concert I stopped with friends to offer
the temple elephant, Dakshini, some treats, carrots and apples. I'd done this a
few times with these friends. The mahout allowed us into the enclosure, and the
elephant, a female entering her senior years, is tolerant after serving in hundreds
of temple festivals and rituals. I found myself next to her feeding her carrots
and looking into her eye, as large as the palm of my hand. I felt both
compassion for her living a life with a chain around her ankle and wondering if
I should fear her. After all, I might have edibles but why would she trust me?
I don’t know what she was thinking, but she watched me without blinking or
lifting a foot or leg. Perhaps she sensed what I was thinking. She took the
gifts from my hand with her trunk and also let me put them to her mouth.
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| Mahabalipuram, Tamilnad, India |
I think of Dakshini often, wondering how she is and if
someone else is giving her treats. I’m not one to anthropomorphize animals, but
I do believe they have their own world with feelings and worries and attitudes.
I won’t speculate on what she was thinking, but I will remember looking her in
the eye and feeling the stillness in her as I stood only inches away, one hand
on her neck and the other holding fruit.
Throughout the centuries artists in
India have depicted the elephant as a light and graceful animal. When I stood
close to Dakshini, I could understand the feelings behind the art.
