Meanwhile, Back at the S.P.C.A.

Compared to most other animals, rabbits have the neatest poop ever. That’s one thing I was grateful for this morning as I cleaned cages in the Small Animal part of our local animal adoption center. I was also enjoying how quiet rabbits are until Houdini, a white furred, pink eyed, good sized, Easter-style rabbit huffed at me. Hufff hufff huff!

Here am I, Bunny Goddess, about to bestow fresh bedding and alfalfa pellets, and he has the nerve to get all huffy at me. But I gave him some space and hurried up with the food, so he got quiet again and munchy. I tried to remember if any divinities were ever so humbled by those they patronized in the old stories.

Later in the morning, I took on a new job helping with a show and tell and story program for young children. We set up coloring stations and put on music, placed quilts on the floor for the story time, and greeted our guests. They were so young that they were mostly pre-verbal, but bright-eyed and pink cheeked. Today’s animals were conures, small parrots with large black eyes, green and blue bodies, red tails and almost iridescent, sturdy beaks. We put a little fence around the cage against the curiosity of little fingers.

Encouraged not to expect too much from such little ones, I noticed that some wandered off or sat down to coloring. Before long children and adults surrounded the cage where One, Two, Three, Four and Five were perched like a line of clones. Five pairs of birds'eyes followed us. Our leader pointed out the special features of birds – wings, feathers, beaks – and a few children flapped their arms and grinned. They got it, the sameness and the difference of these jewel bright animals.

As the room filled up with toddlers, infants, and adults, the birds suddenly relaxed and moved to the bars, the swing, the seed cups, whistling and calling out – to each other and to us. Suddenly we weren’t people staring here and birds frozen in fear there, but two communities appreciating one another, talking and connecting in ways you could barely see but could feel. The room got noisier and noisier and the leader clapped her hands so the people knew to settle in for a story. And the five green birds, they grew quiet, too, and stayed that way until the story’s end.

Being with animals often reminds me of my perch in the grand schematic, which is good for the ego and lifts the spirit, kind of like wings.