Animals | Camino Bay Books https://www.caminobaybooks.com Craig Brestrup, Author Fri, 30 Sep 2022 20:49:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.caminobaybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-cc-hackberry-whitebkgd-32x32.jpg Animals | Camino Bay Books https://www.caminobaybooks.com 32 32 A Grand Mystery https://www.caminobaybooks.com/a-grand-mystery/ Thu, 23 Sep 2021 13:00:45 +0000 https://caminobaybooks.com/?p=236462 I don’t fear falling into anthropomorphism when I think as I did yesterday. The label is used erroneously far more often than not, it seems to me. I will cheerfully call it anthropomorphism when I read on my almond milk container these words: “Shake me up. After opening, I belong in the fridge. And don’t keep me waiting.” But if you go far beyond that, I raise questions. Animal affection and joy, grief, and sadness, thought and care—I see nothing in existence that suggests these qualities are owned and expressed only by humans. The more compelling question to me is why so many people are so concerned to avoid any appearance of granting animals more than rudimentary feelings, if that, and instrumental behaviors and relationships, concerned only to survive and reproduce, especially their genes. Why the apparent anxiety at acknowledging commonality? Why not rejoice at sharing the goodness of being with other creatures whom both evolution and a receptive and sensitive awareness suggest are fellow travelers through a grand mystery? Love and inclusion fit better than exclusion.

]]> Thoughts From My Journal – Coyote Ululation https://www.caminobaybooks.com/thoughts-from-my-journal-coyote-ululation/ Tue, 13 Jul 2021 13:00:59 +0000 https://caminobaybooks.com/?p=236360 Last night Twig and I sat our nightly vigil keeping an eye on the sky. No clouds, no halo, and the moon having risen later than last night it was having to catch up; otherwise, firmament was unchanged. Then it happened — yips and howls, whines, and yowls, rising and falling of coyote ululation, the perfect desert nighttime sound and one that always brings me to smile. Partly it’s the pleasure of rightness sustained and partly of satisfaction that they still survive even after all we’ve put them through. “God’s dog,” for sure. My dog, on the other hand, was silently alert; at home among the pack of four she’s always the first to vent her primordial wild Canid nature in the morning, more wolf-like than coyote; it seems her response to the sunrise. But last night she just listened. On my first visit here all the years ago I was up early with a lantern against the dark and coffee against the chill, dog Annie (the best that ever existed, she died in her sleep nineteen years ago) at rest on her long leash; then coyotes spoke, and, out of character, she rushed away, snapping her collar, and disappeared into the night. I was sure she’d either be killed or—who knows? —join the pack and I’d never see her again. I stayed in place brooding and waiting for light, imagining the worst, and in an hour, she returned, greeted me, and resumed her position, now collarless.

#coyote #desert #desertnights

Photo by Joshua Wilking on Unsplash

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