Turning On the Machine and Turning off the Animals

The monkey leaving after I took out my camera to photograph it.

In the span of two days I was nuzzled by a pig, kissed by a deer, greeted by a monkey, humped by a dog, and unknowingly provided shelter to a moth in my hat while visiting a rural town deep in the mountains of South America. The first three of these encounters occurred at a zoo where geese and parrots loudly proclaimed dissatisfaction toward human onlookers including myself whose smirk in relation to…