blackbirds frying on a wire

30s | he/his/him | coyote therian, big cat clado-hearted, questioning birds | main is archaeocoyote icon by David Yu

[outsidewolves]

[keymintt]

everything to think about, everything to notice

[canisconcorax]

It's always been interesting to me how much focus there is in the alterhuman community on why we are the way we are, in comparison to my experiences in the trans community of the why being a largely unimportant and uninteresting question that mostly gets brought up by transphobes instead of trans people. Meanwhile in years of lurking and occasionally speaking up in the therian community, it feels like there's always some back and forth going on between spiritual vs psychological vs whatever other causes.

Maybe the outsized focus on it within the alterhuman community comes with alterhuman identities being much harder to externalize and so we end up ruminating on what "makes us" alterhuman as a way of validating internally what the external world cannot. I remember too that back in the grilling days that part of that ritual was often divulging your whole life history in search of the moment of "awakening" and the influences surrounding it. But I never really saw discovering myself as coyote as opening my eyes for the first time so much as putting on a new pair of glasses to reevaluate what was already there.

I suppose longing and dysphoria could be part of it, too. I can definitely understand wanting to retreat into memories of a past life or what have you if that's something that you experience.

I do identify with some mixed psychological, spiritual, and perhaps other factors, but it always feels like an odd chicken and egg situation for me. Does animality feel connected to my autistic and other neurodivergent experiences because it springs from those experiences, or does it feel connected because those are just my reality that all my other experience, including animality and transness and etc, filters through? Am I an animist and a polytheist because I'm an animal, or am I an animal who chose to be an animist and a polytheist because these, to me, honor my experiences more than more human-centric paths?

Part of why I identify my therianthropy so strongly with my autism is that my outward displays of emotion feel so kneecapped by phantom sensations telling me I'm emoting when I'm not. I'm nervous or anxious about something and my ears go back and I can feel fur prickling on the back of my neck, except they don't and it doesn't. I'm backed into a metaphorical corner by a situation at work and I want to bare my teeth and claim back some of my space, but what comes out is a pained grimace and I go hide in the bathroom for a while. I'm happy and relaxed and just enjoying my time with friends, but someone asks me if I'm feeling okay because I'm not smiling and laughing.

My sensory sensitivities feel very interwoven between neurodivergence and animality too. My love for the sensations of wind and flowing water and warm sunlight. How jittery I get around loud noises and loud human voices, to the point that I don't even like raising my own voice. How quickly my battery runs out at large crowded events, how overstimulated I quickly become about being touched.

Does this mean my autistic traits are actually just coyote traits, or that my animality and autism go hand in hand, or that the way my autism manifests is filtered through coyote? Who really knows or can ever know. I just work here!

[knifeofvenus]

geneva l haley

[canisconcorax]

Coyote perks up in sometimes the strangest places, though I suppose they really aren't all that strange for an animal known for its ability to survive in the margins of urban and suburban North America.

Walking through alleyways, taking shortcuts into overgrown empty lots, strolling into a claustrophobic corner store for a small break from the summer heat by the drink fridge. Learning the best bus routes to avoid the tourist crowds, getting to know the subway schedule by heart.

Coyote loves sitting in a quiet shady corner of a busy park and eating a greasy sandwich from the local shop for lunch, and coyote kind of likes the smell of beer and sweat and other bodily fluids that wafts out of busy bars on summer nights. Coyote watches hungrily when the rabbits are out nibbling on people's gardens in the early mornings, and coyote quietly protests every rat not chased when they scurry along the sidewalk at night. Coyote wants ice cream for dinner even when its vegan and teriyaki for dessert even when its been in the fridge for a day (or two) too long, and coyote wishes he had just a little bit less impulse control at the farmers market when the fresh fish are out.

Maybe this is part of why I don't draw as strong a delineation between human and animal as some therians do, nor reject humanity as strongly as some do. The coyote in me is animal and yet delights in humanity, wants to sniff around and make a practical home in the margins beneath blackberry brambles and concrete rather than dream fruitlessly of an idealized life in human-untouched wilderness. The wilderness doesn't have teriyaki.

Of course, I love “the wilderness” too, but I recognize how much the idea of wilderness is a constructed concept that's, paradoxically, deeply wrapped up in human perception. So many “untouched” places have been stewarded by human hands for thousands of years. So many wilderness documentaries of far off lands are a camera behind which sits an extensive film crew and bustling roads and towns full of human life.

“The wild” only exists in relation to “the tamed and cultivated and built up.” Why would coyote constrain himself by such things when there are den sites to claim under the highway and plenty of small critters to eat? Why would he care where the pavement ends and the dirt begins? He's busy thriving where he is.

[dog-boyism]

[canisconcorax]

There's something about beachcombing and tidepooling that really scratches the itch of coyote under my skin, to the point that I've wondered sometimes about whether I should look into coastal wolves.

I think it's more just the scavenger in me instead, wanting to sniff around under muddy rocks and peer hungrily into life-filled puddles. It makes me wish my eyes and nose were closer to the ground, that my back wasn't complaining after a couple hours of crouching down and bending over.

My attention rapt, my ears pricked. The breeze coming in off the water ruffles the fur on the back of my neck as I paw at stones to turn them over and watch crabs and tiny shrimp scuttle away to new hiding places. Living an adult humam life full of constant human activity, I don't get to reconnect with myself super often anymore, but here I do.

[canisconcorax]

On watching birds with my cat

Having a cat around 24/7 for the first time in my life has been a learning experience, both on a practical level and on a nonhuman level. I've always loved cats and enjoyed spending time around them, but that time was limited in childhood because my father was allergic and in adulthood due to not being in a stable enough housing or financial situation for a pet until recently. I grew up with dogs and love them too, but always figured that I would vibe much better with a cat at home given my sensory issues.

Parts of that assumption have proved false while others have stood the test of cat ownership, and overall it's an enjoyable experience, but the difference in expectation vs experience has had me questioning my identity in the past few months.

For the last few years I'd kind of settled into thinking of myself as a feline therian but canine hearted. My connection to coyotes has been the longest lasting and most important part of my identity for the past twenty odd years, but part of me always felt that cat was more of at the core of who I am and coyote was a hearttype that threaded through my more everyday and archetypal experience but didn't run as deeply.

I've been coming to realize though that I think the truth is probably more the opposite. What I connected with in felininity was more it's outward archetype, while I find the actual day to day of feline existence rather alien. There are similarities and a great deal of empathy there sure, but not the easy instinctive Knowing that I experience with canids even when they're of the varieties that are too bubbly and social to be altogether comfortable for me.

Which brings me to watching birds out the window with my cat. Both of us engaged in the same fascination and a similar hunger - I'm both a birder by hobby/appreciation and an animal who sees small moving animals and considers them instantly as tasty little treats, for all that I don't act on that except in a more formal hunting/gathering capacity. There's so much commonality between us in this and a million other little moments, and I've never seen a domestic dog do anything like this.

Yet it's like we speak a different language while doing the same thing, two approaches to a much older predatory instinct. Perhaps the commonality all along was less the species itself and more the greater proximity of cats to non-domestication, their continued sense of measure and practice in pursuit of prey that no longer exists in the excited prey-driven dog bounding loudly after a squirrel in the park.

I suppose the moral of this story is that questioning goes on much longer than some may think, and that to know an animal requires more than books and videos and pictures and minor interactions - but both of these are already well-trodden ground. Regardless, it feels nice to step fully into the paws of coyote once again, like an old friend who's just been waiting for me to return. Perhaps time to lay sprawled in a sunbeam with my cat for a nice nap, together.

[lukanthropi]

Being nonhuman feels like this:

[canisconcorax]

on seeing animals through the lens of animality

I see sentiments sometimes in the nonhuman community to the effect of wondering or lamenting how wild or captive animals, especially our theriotypes/kintypes, relate to us if we ever encounter them. But what I think about a lot is how my journey as a nonhuman informs how I relate to animals.

I kind of see myself in a permanent state of questioning - while I don't find the back and forth about what "makes" me believe I'm a coyote or a puma or some kind of bird thing terribly interesting, I tend towards more mundane psychological explanations, which leads me towards thinking of putting a specific species on what I experience as less an exercise in uncovering the One Truth and more an exercise in narrowing down many equally viable possibilities towards one that just feels the most right. This means that for most of my life (I've known I was nonhuman since my early teens, first starting lurking in therian spaces in the Livejournal days) anytime I've looked at a new animal there's been a little checklist I go through in my brain about it, comparing it to my internal experience, and wondering about ITS internal experience.

This has led me down a lot of interesting rabbit holes. What does it actually feel like to have eyes on the side of your head, or to have a beak or gills, or to have a bird-like respiratory system? Am I equipped to know that or do I just take it on faith when those things do or don't feel like my internal experience? I know I'm some broad-winged soaring bird because when the wind passes through my fingers just so I feel like I could tip my pinky and gently turn through the air while barely having to move another muscle. But what does it feel like for a whale to be so encased in blubber that an arctic sea that would pretty much instantly kill me feels just right? Does meat smell different to a canine nose than to mine? How would I manage my breathing if I went for my morning run on four legs instead of two? Does a manta ray feel curiosity or surprise when it encounters a human diver? Do crows tell each other about their days when they go back to roost for the night?

In my constant wondering, is this an animal I could be, I've put myself in the place of just about every animal I've learned about over the years and wondered what its like to live its life, what it feels and what range of emotions it experiences and how much or little it can communicate and whether it knows its place in the world. And obviously there's plenty about the internal experience of animals that's still, for the time being, beyond the reach of science. But when I think about the study of animals, from the perspective of a therian, those things when they do come to light are by far the most exciting. That excitement of discovery and inquiry is just maybe why I don't feel any hardcore pressure to settle down into knowing exactly what I am.

[thalassarche]

Common Raven (Corvus corax) teasing a gull (Larus spp) - series by Sandra Gilchrist

According to the photographer, the raven eventually left and the gull seemed no worse for wear after the interaction. 

[salamanderteeth]

Problem purposer