In Memory of Arne Naess, Deep Ecologist

One of the reasons it’s so hard to acknowledge the rights of animals is that we are all complicit in their abuse and exploitation. If we acknowledge our culpability, we’ll feel obligated to do something about it.

But what are we supposed to do? This was the fundamental question that occurred to the Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess who died in his sleep last week at age 96. He was the founder of the Deep Ecology movement.

According to Naess, there is no absolute answer. Each person must develop her own “ecosophy. ”

Naess thought that once we recognized a truly non-anthropocentric ecology, wisdom would follow. The paradigm would change.

According to Naess, no creature has privileged value in the ecosystem; we are all equal.

Living with Shanti as an equal does shift the paradigm for me. I’m obliged to figure out how a person can live without exploiting a parrot or a pig or a cow or a dolphin. It’s not easy because our civilization is predicated on the notion that human beings are superior to all other beings.

There have been previous human attempts to live without exploiting animals, but in practical terms, such a utopia is impossible.

Jainism, an inspiring Indian religion with 10,000,000 adherents, is based on the principle that all living beings have souls and that all souls are equal. Nonviolence (Ahimsa) is a foundational principle, and Jain compassion extends even to microscopic organisms.

Jains notwithstanding, however, our spiritual concerns for animals are trumped by our perceived anthrosupremacy and our massively invasive technology.

There is no way to take a Hippocratic animal-rights oath to do no harm. Human technology harms animals. Period. We are big, smart superpredators and we’ve developed immense power over the rest of life on Earth.

How then can we reduce the harm we do— the overpopulation, destruction of habitats, depletion of resources, extinction of species, global warming, pollution of air and sea?

Although our concern for animals is different from our human concerns, it must still be guided by humility, austerity and compassion. It makes sense for humans to end world hunger among our fellow humans, but it is scientifically incoherent to advocate the eradication of animal hunger. Some species’ gratification of hunger comes at the expense and demise of other animals. And we, one way or another, are in charge. We will always be making enormous decisions for other species. Some will result in death.

We have a special role in protecting animals not from all harm, but at the very least from the deliberate and unnecessary infliction of pain and suffering.

The first step, I believe, is to take other beings seriously. That's what shifts the paradigm. We must realize we are not superior, and we are not alone.

Photos: South American parrots and a Jain temple complex in India.

Mallards on Lake Casitas; Shanti at Home

There were a pair of male mallards on the shore of Lake Casitas today, dunking their iridescent green heads in limpid water. There seemed to be a joy intrinsic to their gesture, but perhaps I was only projecting the happiness I felt in contemplating duck beauty. Either way their grace was a kind of gift, a gratuitous blessing from innocent avian to obsessively curious and dangerous Homo sapiens.

I watched the redwings in the reeds -- the vultures, herons and egrets overhead.

A vulture flew across the hillside where white-tailed deer graze. He made two or three robust wing flaps, but mostly coasted three hundred meters, braking abruptly at the end to make an effortless landing high in a eucalyptus, instantly at rest, nestled in for approaching dusk.

These simple activities of wild birds are magical to us humans, sunk deep in our alienation and wonderment. We admire the sublime fitness of a bird in its natural habitat. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have come to this: the happy dunking of the yellow mallard beak in the lake water, the long glide of Cathartes aura, the snowy egret perched silently on one leg in high grass.

We intuit that there is a perfect pleasure – a clarity -- for these beings; we sense that they luxuriate in their biological niche.

But such perfection is forever denied to Shanti and to all our companion animals. Try as we might, we cannot recreate the African rain forest in our cities, farms or suburban homes. At best we become a homely and artificial surrogate flock for our birds.

Bred in captivity, there is no going back to nature for Shanti. Fed from birth by human hand, Shanti has no mother and father parrot, no social relationships with parrot kin, no future parrot lover or parrot babies hatching high in a forest tree.

We superpredator humans who bend and twist the biosphere to hold us anywhere, anytime, anyhow underestimate the sacred hold of native habitat on our fellow-creatures. Once we left the savannah to conquer the planet, our sense of home became more abstract and malleable; we forgot that other species cannot adapt as easily as we.

For a parrot, no house of steel can ever replace rain forest. No store-bought bag of treats and seeds can match the naked splendor of fresh seeds, berries, nectar and nuts.

I have brought Shanti into my world to enrich my life -- a world in which Shanti can survive, and I hope, somehow flourish. But it is finally a human world in profound debt to parrots and to countless other sentient species we have violated and molded.

What a gift our companion birds give us, what a sacrifice they make. Our debt to them can be repaid only in love, kindness and perpetual protection.

Photo: An African Grey at one-day old, hatched in an incubator.

Parrots and Sparrows: Why We Care

Last May the World Wildlife Fund reported on the arrests of two recidivist African Grey parrot trappers in Lobeke National Park in Cameroon. The men were likely implicated in the decapitation death of thousands of African Greys. Another parrot thief in Cameroon was arrested with 353 heads and 2000 tails in his possession. Those body parts were apparently destined for a witch doctor who used them as homebrew medicine for the mentally ill.

The trappers cut off the heads of the birds and pluck the tail feathers. The rest of the body is either eaten or left to rot on the ground

Since the live parrot trade is now banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, there’s has been an uptick in dead parrot smuggling. Heads and feathers of dead creatures are far easier to conceal and transport than live, screaming animals.

Authorities suspect the parrot heads go to India and China and the tails to Nigeria.

Why should we care about decapitated African Grey parrots?

Shouldn’t our concern for Africa be reserved for human beings who suffer from high infant mortality, AIDS, malaria and many other treatable, preventable and curable illnesses? Aren’t parrots very low on the priority list? And who are we to criticize Cameroon? Don’t we decapitate a few billion chickens, cows and pigs per year?

Don’t we exterminate wild animals the minute they become pests? Here in Southern California, licensed trappers and hunters are hired to kill cougars, black bears, foxes, bobcats and coyotes. Nobody makes much of a fuss.

So don’t we have vastly more important things to care about than a few dead parrots in African forests?

We care not because parrots are as or more important than children or mothers or tigers or pandas. We care because we ought to and we can. We care because it shocks our sensibilities to exterminate beautiful, intelligent animals. We care because the death of a beautiful being diminishes us. We care because caring elevates our spirit. We don’t need to budget what we care about. We don’t need a prioritized grocery list.

Caring radiates. Caring breeds more caring. Empathy isn’t something you save up for a rainy day. We can spend our empathy every day. Empathy blossoms in the spending. It replenishes itself. You can’t give enough of it away. The more you give, the more you’ve got.

Empathy is never too goofy, never too generous.

Money is finite. Activism is finite. But compassion is infinite. Caring is free of charge.

Jesus got it right when he said that not a single sparrow would fall to the ground without God caring. No creature, no caring is too trivial. Empathy is for everyone. Every sparrow matters. Every African Grey.

Photos are Greys who were rescued in Cameroon. Thanks to the Limbe Wildlife Centre

Empathy, Bullfights and Bullshit

Living with Shanti and blogging about animal rights requires--in the service of honesty-- a re-examination of how blithely I’ve been known to shut down my receptivity to animal suffering in the past. If I can come to understand what stifles empathy, maybe I can also understand how it blossoms.

I’ve been to bullfights. Several times. The last time was in 2001 when we were on sabbatical in Spain. We had front row seats at the cozy Plaza de Toros in Sanlúcar de Barremeda, the town where we lived. The ring was small enough to hear the animals’ grunts, smell their sweat and excretions, and watch them bleed.

One of the matadoras was a beautiful 15-year-old girl named Esperanza whom my daughters knew from their art and crafts class. Her triumph that Sunday afternoon so delighted her family, friends and fans that they carried her out of the stadium on their shoulders, showered with rose petals, vivas and oles, like a princess or a saint. Meanwhile, the fresh meat of the dead bull —considered a delicacy— was sold on the spot to bargain-hunting connoisseurs.

To my daughters’ credit they both hid under the benches for the gory part. But I was enthralled, or pretended to be.

I had convinced myself that bullfighting was an art form, a spectacular celebration of Spanish and Andalusian culture, an operatic display of skill and courage. Are we perverse to enjoy it? Do we have a right to entertain ourselves with ritualized suffering and death?

I now regret being a bullfight dilettante. On some level I knew better. I knew, even as I was charmed by bullfighting, that the “sport” was only separated from Michael Vicks-style dog-fighting by the fortuitous lack of a nationalist cultural support system. And how far is it from human sacrifice, child sacrifice?

I’m not sure how we desensitize ourselves so thoroughly and casually to the suffering of bulls. Perhaps we’re indoctrinated and acculturated at a very early age, the way boys become enamored with guns before they even get to pre-school. Perhaps we so love the culture of flamenco music and the art of El Greco, Velazquez, Goya and Picasso, that we are blinded to the dark side—the cult of the bull. Perhaps we’re intoxicated by the sensuality of the bull killers —, their ballet, their passion, their eroticism. Perhaps it’s because bulls don’t scream when they die. Perhaps we view them as such profound symbols of masculine strength that we expect them to sacrifice their own lives as stoic warrior role models.

Whatever the mechanism of enchantment, it’s effective. Empathy is suppressed; families celebrate together afterwards. Life goes on. Except for the bull.

It’s odd that the spectators don’t hate the bull. He’s not the villain; he’s admired for his character. Yet at the same time, he’s viewed as an unfeeling beast. That’s cognitive dissonance for you. The bull is at once insensible to pain, a mere dumb clump of cells, a prop in a play; yet he’s also a martyr, full of passion, power and virility.

I remember loving cattle as a child. I was fascinated by their smell, sound, color and shape. They seemed so gentle, loving and peaceful. So quintessentially innocuous.

Small children take it for granted that animal life is wondrous, precious and good. How can we protect and sustain that appreciation for a lifetime? Not in the bullring.

Is Shanti a Thing?

I bought Shanti as a piece of property. A thing. Ca-ching! I put him on my credit card and walked out the door with no documentation, no responsibilities, nothing. Nobody asked if I knew the first thing about birds, was a suitable parront, or if I was a zoosadist on a binge.

Nothing prevents me from having Shanti for dinner, setting him on fire, or otherwise tormenting him. Nothing prevents me from giving him away. In fact, birds are the most abandoned pet in the world. People shoot birds for fun. And we factory farm almost 10 billion birds — mostly chickens — annually, killing about a million per hour.

Our animals are immensely vulnerable. We’ve got all the power, and we abuse it.

It is our ownership of animals (or in Biblical terms, our “dominion” over them) that provides us with the fundamental basis for abuse. As long as animals are things, we will continue to do them incalculable harm.

When we start granting them rights, we'll have a revolution in law, culture and relationships. We’ll have a very different planet.

The struggle to expand the scope of rights typically runs into disputes about semantics. When European Enlightenment thinkers began to argue for equality they spoke only of the Rights of Man. The US Founding “Fathers” took "man" to mean white, propertied males. It took us almost 100 years more to abolish involuntary servitude and begin to extend rudimentary rights to African slaves. Then it took another half century to allow women to vote. Today, we are in a civil rights struggle to extend equal rights to same-sex couples, including gays and lesbians in the family of beings with rights.

Animal rights present the ultimate definitional barrier. Opponents argue that only persons can have rights. Only persons are moral agents. Only persons have free will. Only persons can fulfill the responsibilities that are attendant upon rights. Are rights a kind of contract, the terms of which must be agreed upon by the parties? Or can a nonhuman animal also have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

What would it mean to take such an idea seriously and implement it? Let's find out.

The good news is that most people show some sympathy for animals. We love our pets. We abhor cruelty. We deplore waste and gluttony. We support a sustainable ecology, the preservation of the wilderness, the protection of endangered species. We admire animals as a source of wonder, beauty and spiritual sustenance.

But we’re also overwhelmed by the prospect of accepting animals as members of the family of sentient beings. We’re afraid: I’d go crazy being a vegetarian. I’ll die of some terrible disease lab experimentation on monkeys and rats. The economy will collapse without factory farming. My kids will be deprived of their cultural heritage if the zoo stops exhibiting lions and tigers.

We ask, shouldn’t humans be our priority? Yes, of course. If you have to choose between your daughter and your kitten or your mom and you’re her poodle, it makes moral sense to favor the human relationship. If we have to solve the problem of a billion human beings starving or a billion chickens, we'll know how to prioritize. But that’s the wrong way to frame the question. A better way is to ask how can we provide for the needs of our entire family of being, of sentience, of intelligence, of feeling? How can our ethics become all-inclusive? How can we construct a culture that doesn’t sacrifice one set of compelling moral interests for another?

The Martians Are Coming

The January heat wave here in Southern California is probably an indicator of global warming. Catastrophic climate change is the long-range forecast. As for more immediate threats, when the hot Santa Ana winds blow like they’ve been blowing, forest fire is a distinct possibility. Then when the rains follow the fires, flooding and mudslides are likely in the burn areas. If that’s not enough peril for you, there’s always the San Andreas fault line which promises to deliver a major earthquake any minute, decade or century now.

For one glorious afternoon, however, I’m forgetting about impending disaster and environmental collapse. Carpe diem. I’m just enjoying the sunshine at the beach.

Today was a wonderful day in Ventura. Maybe once in ten walks on the beach I’ll get to see dolphins, and today they were especially close—-leaping out of the water, diving, flipping and splashing. To watch fellow mammals as agile and graceful at sea as the dolphins is to realize that swimming with such ease, passion and intensity is as remarkable and alien to us as the flight of birds. Being a dolphin or being a parrot suggests a world of animal feeling so far from our own sensorium that it might as well be on a different planet in a different galaxy. Yet, a million light years away or a hundred meters up in the sky or out to sea, sentient experience is as close to our essence as our own heartbeat. Dolphiness and parrothood are feeling, and all feeling creatures are our kin.

No one would be particularly surprised if the methane clouds reported recently over Mars turn out to be proof of extraterrestrial life. While the Martians are probably microbial, if and when we do find intelligent life in outer space, it will be like us: subjective. What else could it be but something to marvel at, like the dolphins, the brown pelicans and the parrots?



I watch the pelicans flying the coastline in groups of six. They are gorgeous and abundant, full of life. This year, however, they began to turn up dazed and moribund in parks and on suburban lawns. Since they are very sensitive and were once on the verge of DDT-induced extinction, scientists suspected poisoning, exposure to some environmental toxin. But it now appears they were terminally debilitated by a unusually intense winter storm on their way south.

We can’t guarantee the safety of pelicans in the wild to the extent we can protect our companion animals at home. A safe environment for Shanti may protect him from many hazards, but he can’t fly free. Flight, even in a controlled environment, might decrease his security. Inside he’ll have glass, stove tops and ceiling fans to contend with; outside there are hawks, the elements and cruel homo sapiens.

Shanti, who came into my life with flight feathers clipped, has made me think deeply about a bird’s right to fly. Can I clip him again when the feathers grow back? I'm undecided.

I watch the seagulls hover in the warm breeze and I wonder.

Note: The video of swimming dolphins and pelicans flying above was actually taken in Ventura (not by me; I found it via YouTube)

Waking up

I’m getting better at interpreting Shanti’s feelings. It’s relatively easy to tell when he’s fearful, tense or frustrated; fear and anger are the emotions humans are most likely to concede to animals. It’s harder, however, to recognize and acknowledge joy, playfulness and sociability. Parrots are not domesticated dogs who run to greet you, wag their tails and jump up on your lap. For one thing, birds have less expressive faces. But after a while, you learn the beat and can dance to the rhythm of a parrot’s inner glow and joie de vivre.

Why is it important to concede that animals have feelings, emotional experiences and an inner life? Because a revolution in our treatment of animals will follow.

If we begin to ascribe to birds, cows, rats and monkeys the level of awareness we take for granted in our pet dogs, we will dramatically change the ethics of our biosphere. We will be morally obliged to stop making excuses for the depraved indifference we often show to our fellow beings.

Not all life is sentient. The philosopher Daniel Denett has noted that some forms of life, like trees, never wake up. Figuring out just where, when and how sentience kicks in is a challenge for the 21st century. Neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and other disciplines will bring us ever closer to distinguishing animal sentience and feelings from the deep sleep of trees. As that happens, behavioral science will help us communicate with animals. Legal scholars and politicians will develop better laws to protect and respect other beings.

In the meantime, however, the ones who need to “wake up” are us.

We’ve got to do the hard introspective thinking and the heavy lifting of daily interaction with animal life and animal products.

We also need to lobby our educational institutions to emphasize environmentalism, animal rights and ethics in science teaching. Compassionate science, untethered in its pursuit of truth, ultimately can overcome vested interests, prejudices and deeply ingrained biases. Scientists have followed the evidence to tell us the truth about global warming, overpopulation, the toxicity and addictive qualities of nicotine, homosexuality and a myriad of other issues long cloaked in superstition and ignorance. Empowered by compassionate science, ethicists can guide us in interpreting advances and reducing the harm done by prejudice and greed; environmentalists can implement our collective wisdom and understanding; and we can all participate in good conscience. We can become a world of minimal hunting, minimal factory farming, minimal animal experimentation in laboratories, minimal exploitation of animals for entertainment and frivolous consumer goods.

When the Shantis of the world are freer, we too are freer. When they are better off, we too are better off.

Preaching to the Birds

"Thereupon St. Francis went up naked into the pulpit, and began to preach so marvelously of the contempt of the world, of holy repentance, of voluntary poverty and of the desire of the celestial kingdom, that all they which were at the sermon, men and women in great numbers, began to weep very bitterly, with wonderful devotion and compunction of heart…"

The 12th century Italian mystic, St. Francis, is said to have preached to the song birds of Assisi. The image of the barefoot friar talking to the forest animals is spellbinding. For hundreds of years, Francis has inspired artists and charmed the meek of the Earth, especially children.

What can it mean for a man — a purported spiritual genius— to preach to birds? Perhaps it only means he understood them deeply, as Jane Goodall understands chimpanzees, as Mark Bekoff understands coyotes and as Irene Pepperburg understands African Greys. Perhaps when villagers saw Francis “preaching” he was just communicating attentively in compassion and respect.

The traditional view of the church is that Francis was teaching the birds human morality. But such an interpretation, consistent with the view that the pyramid of creation has “man” (in God’s image) at the top, seems at odds with the saint’s radical compassion and creativity.

Francis was a visionary who sang joyously on his pilgrimages through the Italian countryside, nursed lepers, gave away his father’s riches to beggars, mediated between Crusaders and Muslims, and became a lifelong barefoot mendicant. Such a person seems more likely to have been an iconoclast who questioned conventional notions of morality than a priggish conformist who enforced them.

Was Francis a pedant and a fanatic who tediously urged animals to tame their desires and behave more like Christians? Or was he so connected to the feelings of both humans and non-humans that he felt compelled to genuinely interact with his fellow beings rather than to hunt, domesticate and exploit them? Did Francis simply include the birds, sheep, wolves and donkeys in his community, his flock? Is it blasphemous to think that he —like us— was shocked and dismayed by the mistreatment of animals?



Francis is the patron saint of animals. Children take their pet pigs and kitties and parrots to church to be blessed in his name. But what would it mean for adults to take “preaching to the birds” seriously? Would we change our attitudes and behaviors? Would we, like Francis, approach them in humility, wonder, grace and poverty – in loving relationship to other beings?

“All these people accuse you and curse you,” Francis said, “But brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people.”

On his deathbed Francis thanked his donkey for a lifetime of service. The donkey, according to legend, wept. The story may well be apocryphal, but its theme – that animals experience grief and other deep emotions and that Francis was intensely aware of animal feeling and consciousness – still moves us and instructs us, almost a millennium later.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Yesterday, I wrote about the dangers of fretting over bird cognitive development as an impediment to enjoying your relationship. Concerns about lagging African Greys are understandable given the extent to which we’ve hyped African Greys with names like Einstein. Then there's the stack of textbooks, scientific publications media attention Alex the African Grey has received. Prof. Irene Pepperberg’s CAG not only made scientific history with his linguistic achievements--proving once and for all that Greys understand language rather than just mimic it-—he was also the first parrot to merit an obituary in the New York Times.




But besides worrying that your parrot or child may not be a braniac there are additional ways to let human anxieties get in the way of a joyous relationship with bird or child.



We owe our kids and our birds a modicum of trust and confidence in their safe and happy futures. If the companions we nurture get infected with our anxiety over their well-being, that can be as debilitating as psittacosis or hepatitis.

Evolution has designed birds and humans to survive. This was a wonderful lesson I learned from the pediatrician who first examined my children and detected my tendency to overthink and overworry all aspects of their health. Dr. Pérez basically told me to chill, that my babies--even Eva who was a four-pound preemie —were healthy and strong. Once a child makes it through the birth canal, has well-functioning organs, five senses on high alert and a rockin' immune system, you can give evolution the benefit of the doubt. This kid's a winner.

Accepting the gift of the presumption of a healthy life for my children -— without any guarantees, of course—- was liberating for me.

Sure, babies can get menengitis, brain cancer, or AIDS. They can drown in the backyard swimming pool. They can be victims of abduction or urban warfare. They might grow up schizophrenic, diabetic or in a lifelong struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. I’ve seen all of the above. But still, disaster is rare. Most of us will live a half century or so in pretty decent health, or with manageable illnesses/disabilities that won’t significantly impair our ability to lead fulfilling lives.

The same for birds. They can be ravaged by infection or kidney failure. They can eat poison, die in a fight with a house cat or doberman, chew their way to electrocution through the TV cord, land on the stove burner and go up in flames. They can inhale Teflon fumes; or they can get disoriented and fly away, ending up lost and eaten by an eagle or a pack of coyotes.

But these catastrophes probably won’t befall you and your bird. If you simply take a few precautions and give your loved one the fundamental care she needs, chances are good that all your anxieties are for naught. Fretting is in our DNA, but we don’t have to let it take control of our lives.

Think of safety and security, but don’t be motivated by fear. Chronic fearfulness can short circuit your relationships. It’s not good for you, your child or your parrot.

Parronting Advice (for myself)

Whether you’re raising a baby or a parrot, you can risk missing out on much of the joy if you focus excessively on achieving developmental goals or on living up to your own or other’s expectations.

Will Shanti step up on my hand like a good little parrot? Will his first words be precocious or delayed? Will he be congenial and adorable with everyone; or will he be obstinate, withdrawn and defensive? Is he a generous soul who can get along with many humans or tantrum-prone and overly dependent on just one?

I have to remind myself to let the parrot be a parrot, and to leave myself alone too.

A good parent and a good parront can’t be self-flagelating and competitive about their loved one’s development. Let them be a little spontaneous, idiosyncratic, unpredictable and crazy. The price of perpetual parental anxiety is to wake up one day and realize you missed the best part of your animal’s development because you were too busy worrying about it. You risk having children and animals who will view you as too controlling and rigid. Your bird may end up compulsively plucking his feathers, while you’re teetering forever on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Shanti dropped to the floor for a few minutes today, pooped twice on the carpet, scratched at the couch, and eventually inched up to my fingertips and risked a ride home on my hand. It was a glorious moment of trust and excitement, as he flapped his wings mightily, pierced my finger slightly with his nail, and hung on for dear life. I gently placed him on his perch, where he now watches as I type. It’s been a great day. Like every day with Shanti.

Is Having a Parrot Better Than Having a Baby?

Short answer: no. Becoming a father was hands-down the best thing that ever happened to me.

Besides, comparisons between human relationships and animal relationships are not very instructive. We humans and nonhumans simply live our lives together in utter interdependence, with ample opportunities for love among us.

So why are we having this conversation?




Well, caring for Shanti reminds me a lot of becoming a parent 21 years ago. For one thing, this is the first time in two decades that I’m excited about getting up in the morning. That’s a major improvement over dread on a bad day and irritability, procrastination and sloth on all the other days.

Lately I’m waking up with wonder and enthusiasm. I love to clean Shanti’s house, wash his dishes, give him his bath, prepare his food, listen to his wild songs, mumbles and sundry mechanical vocalizations.

I also loved getting up at 6 a.m. for my daughters, Hannah and Eva. I had an analogous routine of changing diapers, making breakfast, adoring their affection, yearning to make sense of their babbling, and striving to alleviate their discomforts.

But in some ways it’s more enjoyable with Shanti. Back in 1987, I was a harried 40-year-old with a stressful full-time job. I was a wound-tight ball of frustrations, ambitions and anxieties about the future.

Now I sleep better, work less, and have finally outgrown the grandiose ambitions. I no longer worry much about getting old and dying, since my generation and I are already getting old and dying. True, I’m still a bundle of petty anxieties, ready to implode and collapse at a moment’s notice over a trifle. But playing with Shanti and basking in his glow helps immensely. Nurturing

Shanti works some biochemical magic on my nervous system, soothing my inner idiots, shaming them into at least temporary exile.

Having a profound relationship with other animals like Shanti and with our human loved ones is a blessing, a healing.

Mark Bekoff says, “Without close and reciprocal relationships with other animal beings, we’re alienated from the rich, diverse and magnificent world in which we live. That’s why we seek out animals for emotional support.”

I seek out Shanti to enjoy and accept the responsibilities of this reciprocity with the animal world. In so doing, I enrich my life and expand the range of my compassion.

The Vultures of Lake Casitas and Cozumel

I Went to the lake today and watched the red, black and grey turkey vultures, Cathartes aura, circling above, celebrating life in the sky—silent in soft breeze, basking in winter sun; slowly gliding to earth and gathering on the water’s edge.

The vultures live long lives. Like Shanti and me.

In flight they spread their zigzagged grey-black wings that span an astonishing 70 inches. Pacifists and environmentalists, they thrive for decades without natural enemies, recycling the biosphere, cleaning up the mess of death.

I’m reminded of a week I spent in Cozumel 22 years ago. One morning I stumbled on a colony of vultures perched in the branches, overlooking heaps of garbage. I had seen ibises, roseate spoonbills, alligators and flocks of gloriously raucous red-lored Amazon parrots on that trip, but the vultures—up close and personal—were especially amazing. They sat hunched in their trees, aloof and dignified in the tropical heat, unperturbed by my sudden entrance, happy in their niche.

I return to Shanti in captivity, in his artificial habitat. My walks among the wild vultures and my memories of the Amazon parrot flock only make me appreciate him more.

I'm grateful to Shanti for his unintended sacrifice of the skies, branches and fruits and nuts of his African forest. Born in captivity, he’ll never experience the perfect fit of his species to natural selection. We owe our birds so much.

Birds are forgiving, as are we until we let our resentments and grudges boil and fester. The evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson says, “Forgiveness has a biological foundation that extends throughout the animal kingdom.”

We civilized human being make a big deal of forgiveness, codifying the concept into our value systems and our long-winded religious doctrines. Nonhumans, however, forgive naturally all the pokes, pecks and displacements of outrageous fortune.

How can we repay their trust and boundless affection?

The Snuggles and Cuddles of the Wild Parrot

Late at night Shanti likes to snuggle up in my hand, cuddle and coo. I gently massage his head and neck feathers, his beak, and the delicate bones of his skull and jaw. He will close his eyes, flush with warmth and seem to shudder blissfully. And then there's the sweet afterglow—-for me!

Conventional wisdom has it that Greys outgrow the snuggly phase, but I never will. Our bonding infuses me with a rare happiness reminiscent of what it was like to hold and hug my baby daughters. Hannah and Eva also outgrew the unabashed physical intimacy of infancy, but the bond abides forever.

We jokingly call Shanti my nieto (grandson). But is Shanti really like a baby, a puppy or a kitty? No, he’s like a Congo African Grey Parrot. A wild parrot who’s a wild parrot who’s a wild parrot. I love the deep unknowable mystery of his parrotness, as well as the universal, instantaneously recognizable quality of his love.



Video: An African Grey named Ollie cuddling with a young Homo Sapiens.

Eating Birds

The more I study animal consciousness the more I become concerned about how unconscionably we treat animals.

Although we live our lives in relationship with animals, depend on animals for survival and cherish our companion animals, we often fail to make the empathic connection to the other animals we blithely harm.

Photo: Cornish hens


Ironically, this human failure may also have strong biological roots in our kinship bonds and our instinct to view those outside our kin group and small community as enemies, inferiors or simply objects. Objects we eat.

I’m not a vegetarian. Even though 40 years ago I concluded it was morally wrong to eat meat, I only abstained from doing so for a couple of years. Then I relapsed.

It’s disturbing and demeaning to consciously do wrong. As a moral agent, I believe I should act on my convictions. Being a meat addict is not a valid excuse.

On Christmas Eve we gathered around the dining room table for a holiday meal I cooked: stuffed Cornish hens. Beautiful and beloved Shanti, my Congo African Grey parrot, was literally gazing down on us as we dined and celebrated our holy traditions of Hanukah and Christmas. I felt a twinge of guilt as I stabbed, chewed and swallowed the dead (and delicious) bird. What could be more grotesque, I thought, between sips of wine and holy benedictions.

Shanti may not have a sense of irony, but I sure do. I wondered how I got to this hypocritical point in my meat addiction. I began to consider the convoluted and fallacious arguments I’ve used over the decades to rationalize eating meat. Here’s my top ten list:

Top Ten New Year’s Rationalizations for Eating Meat

1. One person can’t possibly make a difference. If I stop eating meat, I won’t reduce the total number of killed animals in my lifetime even by one. It’s a futile gesture.

2. People eat to live. It’s in our genes, and other animals do the same. Chimpanzees eat monkeys. Owls eat squirrels, bats and ducks. Kingfishers and pelicans eat fish. Fish eat more fish. Why shouldn’t we do what comes naturally?

3. Animals don’t know what death is. As long as we don’t abuse or mistreat them before we kill them, we have done nothing wrong. The animals we eat don’t value individual lives the way we humans do. Individuals of a species are fungible.

4. I need animal protein. At my age, a radical change in my diet might be detrimental to my health and deprive me of the energy I need for all the good I can still do, including promoting animal causes.

5. Vegetarianism isn’t really important in the great scheme of things. It’s a middle class luxury that makes privileged activists feel good about themselves. Our priorities need to be human rights, climate change and ending the wars we wage that cause such immense pain and suffering.

6. Eating meat is culturally important. If I’m puritanical about abstaining from meat, family and friends will have to make special accommodations. I’ll become a pain in the butt to everyone, a self-indulgent prig.

7. A majority of people will never become vegetarians. I should focus instead on the issues of protection and conservation of animals that are realistic and doable. I have a better chance at success by urging people to reject veal crates and paté de fois gras.

8. Cutting down on meat consumption is more realistic than eliminating it entirely. I can eliminate factory-farmed products from my diet and still eat free-range, humanely slaughtered animals and fish.

9. We first need to create a society that’s animal friendly. Our individual practices are not so important. If we educate people about animal consciousness, then no one will want to eat animals in the first place. Future generations will be vegetarian.

10. There’s nothing really “wrong” with eating meat. It’s part of the cycle of life. Life requires life in order to live. Every being on the planet eats the DNA of other beings.

I know, all ten excuses are lame. Maybe I’m hopeless. But that kind of self-deprecating despair just amounts to Rationalization Number 11.

People like me need support to kick our meat habits. Local communities need to create and sustain vegetarian alternatives to meat-based cultures. We need more pro-animal institutions, educators, nutritionists, scientists, technologists and politicians. We need a green and animal-friendly economy with plentiful green jobs that eradicate poverty and expand human and animal rights. Let’s work together in the right direction. Then I’ll become a vegetarian. Right?