Damien Galeone

We the people are clearly animals. This isn’t a dig or a comment on society. I mean, people just act like different animals. I once spent ten hours working in pairs with a guy on a course and at the end of it I could say without hesitation that he was a squirrel. He was on a steady diet of caffeine and so his head and upper body twisted and observed in jerky, frenetic movements. He also had a seemingly unending supply of snacks, which he pulled from pockets and bags and his hat. He was a squirrel.

Some might say this denotes one’s ‘spirit animal,’ but I am not sure I even buy into this. I think we are just animals. And surely as happened with you, I one day sat down and asked myself: What animal am I?  

I used to watch my cat lying around the flat, moving from warm spot to warm spot, following the sun as it arced through the sky. I had more time on my hands back then. After some hours, the cat would get up, yawn, stretch, and then go eat. Eventually it would poop. And then start the whole thing over again. Sometimes the cat avoided the world for hours or even days by hiding in some cozy spot. I needed no further evidence: I am a cat.

Now, this isn’t something you go bragging about or slapping on your resume. You don’t sit across from an interviewer and say ‘Sorry Mr. Jackson, working on a team doesn’t really suit me, because, well, I am a cat.’ No. But as time went on, I came to terms with the fact. I even enjoyed it. I don’t like drama or loud noises. When I drink too much, I get quiet and smiley and sometimes I lick the back of my hands and clean my hair. Yes, I thought, cat.

But then I was on a holiday near the beach and I saw these things called hermit crabs. These guys find a shell to spend their lives in. They hide in those shells quietly among hundreds of other animals while being buried in the sand and minding their own. When they outgrow the shell, they just up and move to a bigger shell and repeat the process.

‘Huh,’ I said, as I scanned the menagerie of pants I own in varying waist sizes, ‘isn’t that interesting,’ I said. Maybe I’m a hermit crab.

The problem with this game is that pretty soon you’re just about every animal there. The deer near my parents’ house eat peacefully until someone approaches. They are overly skittish, see, and sprint and hide when people show up. Me. There’s a mouse in our house who avoids our family like the plague – but manages to make it to dinner every night. Me. People can’t imagine how a fish can be so dumb as to eat a giant barbed hook just because it’s attached to a meal worm. However, students and colleagues leave chocolates on my desk which I eat without a moment’s hesitation. I am a largemouth bass. I’m just lucky I haven’t yet bitten into a barbed hook resting inside of a caramel. Penguins evidently prostitute themselves for rocks. You see the rabbit hole I could go down? But I won’t, because I’m afraid I’d find myself down there twitching my nose and eating lettuce. Penguins evidently prostitute themselves for rocks. Now, this ain’t my style, until you change ‘rocks’ to ‘pens’. Me. Me. Me.

About five years ago I got a Shih tzu. Now, this is a lapdog. It’s short, hairy, white, and has short legs and no nose to speak of. Though it doesn’t look the role at all, this little dog is genetically closer to a wolf than many other – an some would argue, more-deserving – dog breeds. This fact is hilarious, but someone forgot to tell the Shih tzu, who likes doing ferocious wolfy dog stuff for the 3½ minutes its energy holds and before it slips into a 7-hour nap to reenergize in a little ball of fur. Any arguments I made were useless. I tried, but failed.

I am a Shih tzu.

Hear me roar myself to sleep.