MM #44: ANIMALS
Mabel asks what animals are and reflects on Elsie Venner
I grew up in Northern California in the 2000s. I’m young enough to have been raised within the framework of a watered-down New Age philosophy, and old enough for it to not have been problematized. Though I was privileged to have known some real counter culture types who had survived the Dot Com Bubble, most of my neighbors dealt in the kind of hippiedom available for purchase at Whole Foods (and believe me when I say: there were four Whole Foods within twenty minutes of each other in my county, two of them a five minute drive apart). Animals were a big deal in this milieu. Dogs and cats everywhere. Horses. Bird-watching. Tide-pooling. You name it. My family had a dog, a cat, a rabbit, two dozen chickens, bees, and, for a brief period, a lost carrier pigeon, whom we adopted as our own before finding its original owner through its ankle tag.
I’m a believer that most people only say a few things in their lives, even if it sounds like they’re saying a lot of different things. I’ve joked to my therapist that I am pretty much always asking one of two questions: Do I look fat? and Are you mad at me? Everything else is just noise. If my childhood had a question, it was What is your spirit animal?
Despite my upbringing, I was not an “animal kid,” one of those devotees who memorizes species and classes and genus. (A great example of an animal kid is this 30-year-old man named Josh who recently completed the animal encyclopedia that he started when he was nine. I like him.) In all honesty, I was afraid of dogs and only liked my cat. I liked what our chickens and bees produced, but mostly found their presence alarming. I had a major horse girl phase before developing a fear of the animals when I got my period. Despite these obstacles, I did my best to fit in. I’ve always been a clout chaser.
