Animal Feelings
B. W. Wojciechowski
In a recent blog I pointed out that we humans are animals. And we are. But only some of us have given enough thought to how similar we are to our non-human fellow creatures, not only in our physical needs but also in our emotional lives. We eat other species, and yet many of the species we kill or use are capable of forming deep attachments with us or others of their kind or across many most unlike species. I can give you an example of how little we may be aware of animal feelings.
My wife and I live in the mountains of Mexico. There are plenty of other northerners who have migrated here as “thermal refugees.” We are here to enjoy the vistas, the antiquities, the fiestas, music, fine food and the weather. Most of the time our lives are only peripherally involved with the local Mexican community but, even as strangers here, one cannot but be impressed with the politeness and welcoming attitude of the local population. And sometimes the charm spills over unexpectedly, as in this story.
In our case it was a fowl incident. A chicken adopted our garden as its territory. Whether it was lost or a runaway I cannot say. We have a fairly extensive garden with lots of flowers, bushes and trees and the chicken took to patrolling this terrain and keeping it free of bugs and stray seeds. At night Belinda (that was the first name we gave her) roosted in one of the trees to avoid predators, but during the day she meandered throughout our property fearlessly. She was a beauty!
We were delighted and took to leaving out a little cracked corn every day; not too much, but enough to be friendly and welcoming. After a few months, our Mexican maid, Alicia, suggested that despite her tranquility Belinda seemed to be unhappy, perhaps a little bored and lonely. She suggested that Belinda needed a rooster for company and fulfillment.
We took this as sage advice from a person who surely knew Mexican chickens better than we city folk from the north. Alicia offered to bring us a rooster from her neighbor’s flock. It was a generous offer and we agreed. The next day she arrived by bus carrying a shopping bag containing a captive rooster, tied by the feet and riding upside down. She released him from this ignominious confinement, and wow! He was splendid. And I mean really splendid! Gleaming red and bronze and copper. We let him loose in our garden and named him Tristan in recognition of his singing talents; he was a splendid tenor! In no time our Belinda and the newcomer found one another. It was love at first sight and we changed Belinda’s name to Isolde.
Isolde took to following Tristan at a respectful distance, and together they spent all their days patrolling the terrain. At any time of day Tristan might give voice, whereupon Isolde would offer herself and calm his needs. This connubial bliss resulted in a bonus for us: in addition to delightful company, we got a fresh egg almost every day.
Isolde soon taught Tristan, raised in a secure barnyard, how to fly into the tree with her, for safe nighttime roosting. There they sat side by side until morning, when Tristan reminded Isolde of his love as roosters are wont to do, somewhere between 4 and 6 am, just as the dawning light appeared. In fact, as a young rooster in love, Tristan sometimes felt the need for Isolde’s company even before that; sometimes in the dead of night or the middle of the day.
The rooster calls did not bother us; it was love calling, and we found it to be a welcome rustic sound coming from our garden — even at 4 am, IF we heard it. My wife called it the Sound of Mexico. However, our neighbor from a few hundred meters away happened to be a Mexican woman from Guadalajara — a city girl — who visited her weekend home here once in a while; maybe once a month. City living must have deprived her of her tolerance of night noises and especially of her appreciation for the Sound of Mexico. The nightly rooster calls disturbed her.
On one of her weekend visits she complained to us about the presence of a disturbing rooster on our property. There were and still are plenty of other roosters around, admittedly not so close by, not to mention really annoying barking dogs, but this lady seemed to be particularly sensitive to Tristan’s crows. She threatened to send her gardener to catch Tristan and dispose of him. This is Mexico and such things can be done. We took the threat seriously and resolved to save Tristan. The only solution that seemed to be viable was to send him back to the village of his origins.
We had our gardener catch him (in an old fish-landing net (Tristan was not a tame bird) and Alicia took him back to his home on the bus, in the shopping bag, in the same unceremonious upside condition in which he had arrived. Subsequent reports from Alicia were positive. Tristan soon found himself in familiar company and returned to a full regimen of crowing when in need. Not so our abandoned Isolde. Isolde fell into despair.
Isolde had followed Tristan, while he was trapped in the net, from our back garden which had been their home to the front gate, where he disappeared into the shopping bag and vanished down the street. Isolde never returned to their garden of bliss. She moped for several days around the front of the house, at risk from passing dogs and other critters, and then she went into total seclusion. She hopped up on a shelf by the front gate, put her head in the corner, and pined.
Within a few days it was obvious to her that she had lost him forever. The realization sent Isolde into deep depression. She sat in the corner with her head down, facing the corner, refusing to move. She sat there night and day, exposed to stray dogs and predatory coatamundi and other marauders. She did not go back to the garden or even roost in the nearby trees at night. She was inconsolable.
We took food and water to her daily but had to lift her out of the corner and put her next to the provisions to make her eat anything. She would not budge otherwise. She would peck at the food distractedly, drink a little water, and go back to her corner. There she would sit and not move until we picked her up for her next feeding. No amount of petting or talking to her cheered her up.
Isolde was in utter despair and we could do nothing to help. The depression lasted a month or more. She was losing weight and getting weaker. Finally we discussed the problem with a neighbor, who had a friend with a ranch not far from us. The friend agreed to adopt her, to see if she would revive in the company of her chicken flock. And that was what we did. Of course, the name Isolde would not do at the ranch, so she was renamed again, this time Sweet Pea.
Three times was the charm. Subsequent reports were that Sweet Pea happily raised at least two broods of chicks. She became an accepted member of the flock and lived a full and productive life in good company. We were pleased to have restored some happiness to both partners of the tragic pair.
And so the ending was happy for both Tristan and Isolde. As for their sadly short time together, there is no doubt in my mind that Isolde loved Tristan deeply and went into a deep and potentially fatal depression when she lost him.
This sort of love story may not be familiar to many, since the love lives of chickens are not a common subject, not even in children’s story books. But similar attachments are well known, between various animals of the same and even very different species, including between humans and many other animals. Many a human family has suffered the tragedy of bereavement when their dog or cat or other pet died. Many an animal has suffered grief when their human companion died. The legend of Grayfriar’s Bobby, a Skye Terrier who kept watch for 14 years at the grave of his beloved owner and friend, is well known. Animals do have intense sentimental lives and there are numerous anecdotal accounts of such bonding.
For more of my thoughts on many topics, see my other blogs and my books on Amazon.com.
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Amazon.com: Bohdan W. Wojciechowski: Biography, Kindle Books, Blog. Link: amzn.to/1nLTtbP
Amazon.com: Zamora Texts. Bohdan W. Wojciechowski. Link: amzn.to/1Pal6By
