Saturday, December 29, 2018

How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery          Audiobook: 3 hours, 42 minutes     Hardback Book:  208 pages          

Sy Montgomery is an author, a naturalist and loves adventure which during her life has often taken her to parts known and unknown all around the globe.   In her adventures she has often come in contact with animals of all species and has been impressed by the lesson each has taught her and the similarities she has found between humans and animals in dealing with death and mourning, love,  gratitude, unconditional love and empathy.    At some of her lowest moments in life when she has been in such deep despair she was having suicidal thoughts she was so impressed by the love she saw in a tree a kangaroo’s joy they found in the company of each other that it restored her own hope,  how she became friends with an octopus named Octavia who formed a friendship with her as when she neared or opened Octavia’s tank the octopus would swim over to where Sy was and reach her tentacles up in greeting to which Sy would reach into the tank and pet her.   They would hold on to one another like long lost friends all the up until two weeks before the octopus died still never hurting Sy always reaching for her and grasping on to her feeling her skin with iits tentacles.  From her earliest animal encounter before she was 2 years old when Sy disappeared from her parents at the Frankfort Zoo and was found in the Hippo pen without a scratch on her, the hippos seeming to accept her without hurting her in any way.    She has snugglied tarantulas, learned compassion from dogs who are perceptive and pick up on human emotion understanding through their senses empathetically consoling her just when she needed it.  There are so many stories 13 but in her life she is always experiencing how close humans and animals can be.    She respects animals as equal species to humans with all the traits the human psyche is known to muster and many times having extraordinary abilities beyond that of humans.     Such a good book.   There is such a commonality between humans and other species, like communicating with someone from another country or as with a baby, you may not have the same language to communicate to each other but we each can make ourselves understood to one another if only we try.   It is all about perception and understanding.   Animals are not less than humans just other than humans.   I highly recommend this book.    She takes intuitive to a whole other level transcending differences to overcome fear and find commonality with our fellow beings on planet earth.    Bravo, Sy Montgomery.  

 - Shirley J.

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