Another animal I connect a lot to is a fox.
With vulpine last name, I always felt certain kinship to them.
In fairy tales, they were always depicted as a cunning trickster or dangerous enemy to hares, chickens, sentient balls of dough, or old people.
It comes from foxes nature as elusive ambush predators, nocturnal wild animals who would not approach humans unless they are sick or distressed.
I once saw a fox in a countryside, far in a wild field. Startled, or curious, it stared at us, not moving. A family friend tried picking up gravel and throwing in a direction of an animal to scare it away. He succeeded: just a minute or two after, the fox vanished in golden waves of late fall rye field. Despite logic and common sense of a human who is almost quarter century old, I sometimes feel like I made an eye contact with that fox that day.
In a way, humans often treat wild animals as weird dogs: with enough work and heart in a right place, we can soon teach it to eat from out hands, and turn any beast from the wild into our friend. And we are wrong for we cannot distinguish wild from feral.
Feral domesticated animals, like dogs, cats, horses, or pigeons, have been selectively bred to comprehend human signals (especially dogs. They grew brow muscles so that we have easier times reading their emotions.) Our ancestors worked hard on making them more malleable to human impact, and for a language we can both comprehend well. A puppy easily bonds with humans, and in a way it is not too hard to understand when it's happy, or sad, or wants something from you. You will feel when puppy loves you.
Wild animals are different.
They evolved away from humans, often having absolutely different body language and needs. They often see humans as threat, and would avoid us at all costs. When chimpanzee bares teeth, it does not show friendly smile: they are expressing distress.
If the fox is thrown in a pack of dogs, they might recognize each other. Both canines, they have similarities in vocalisations and body languages. However, in a long term interaction, differences become more prominent: a social, friendly creature is different to skittish and solitary one. In the end of the day, fox is a wild animal.
It takes me a lot of work to go out. Loud sounds and bright lights overwhelm me, and it takes some amount of alcohol for me to decensitize enough to enjoy it.
Then, the social interaction comes: it is almost a strategy game where I observe another person's expressions and a flow of dialogue, to sometimes manually switch into listening, or find an appropriate follow-up question. Humans are enigmas to me, and subtexts and implications are riddles I still have trouble guessing.
When sitting home, I start getting antsy. I find it physically impossible to stay inside whole day. I need to leave for a long stroll, as the only way to scratch that itch. I am not talking 15 minutes to coffee shop, rather a whole hour of wandering around.
Wary and cautious, it takes a long while for me to get attached to people, and not that many managed to get there. The ones who did- they are whole universe to me.
Of course, I go out, and socialize, and chill, and have fun. But in the end of the day, I sometimes feel a bit like a wild animal.
I am thinking of the fox in a wild field of rural Ukraine, from that one late summer day years ago. Foxes are wild solitary animals, with different expressions and needs from humans. However, some nights, looking at my reflection in scribbled-over bathroom of a loud dive bar, I wonder if our stares are any similar.
