joy among the animal nerds

The other night I had the good fortune to attend a reading by Virginia Morell, whose Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures was just published. There, in the darkened corner of Book Passage in Corte Madera where we listened to Virginia and watched her slide show, I tried and mostly failed to keep the tears back.  

Tears of elation, really: among the animal nerds, I am with my people.

And honestly, Virginia's stories were filled with so much amazing that I could hardly keep still, let alone not cry. Green parrotlets in Venezuela who possibly, we are still figuring this out, name their young? Rats who laugh and love to be tickled? Border collies who know 1,022 words? African gray parrots raised in labs who say, "Want tree," and are carried down the corridor to gaze through the window at the wonder of a tree outdoors that they will never feel under their feet?  

We are in the company of greatness.

It's been a long time since I felt this, this Among My People-ness that I used to feel in Mammalogy at College of Marin with Professor Joe Mueller and all my devoted classmates. That time that we took a class field-trip to the San Diego Zoo and entertained ourselves for hours in the airport and in flight, testing each other from flash cards that we'd made, eager not just to ace the final but to absorb every wonderful, amazing fact. With those people, I feel like I share an unbreakable bond.  

And there it was again, that feeling, at the reading, with Virginia's voice carrying us through her presentation, each of us holding a copy of her book.  When the lights came up, of course I recognized people I knew. Jill from Mammalogy, Jill of the marine mammals, who was freshly back from a course down South where she worked with baby dolphins, that Jill was in line ahead of me to have her book signed.  Sheri, Sheri of the wolves, Sheri who introduced me to the next canine love of my life, Mr. Burns. Rachael who grew up next door, Rachael of the horses.  And even strangers there felt like friends, animal nerds one and all, every eye shining, bright with the dazzle of what we'd just seen and heard.

It feels so good to be reading Animal Wise right now, extending that joy with every page, re-reading passages that were read aloud to us on Wednesday, reading passages aloud to my husband at all hours, interrupting whatever he might be doing or reading for the sheer happiness of sharing, again, all the remarkableness of the other creatures we share this earth with, that we share so much with.

Such good company: animals and animal nerds!

Check out this short video from National Geographic for more about the Venezuelan parrotlets.  So cool that the scientist who conducted these studies, Karl Berg, was in the audience with us this week.