Yes I talk to animals.
I talk to them more often than I talk to people and I get weird looks. Do I care? No I do not. Yesterday I was assisting a giant crawdad return to a creek that had flooded. Today I am trying to leave food in the vicinity of an abandoned fledging bird who looks so lost and doesn’t know how to fly, trying to feed it without it becoming reliant on me because it needs to learn to fend for itself.
I talk to animals because they aren’t mean or judging. They just accept trust. I spent twenty minutes petting and soothing the crawdad until it was comfortable with me picking it up and moving it to the creek without panicking. I keep speaking gently to the fledgling bird to try and coax it to eat the food I leave behind and show it I’m not a threat. I’m not only helping them because they’re innocent animals that deserve to live, but they’re also victims.
The crawdad managed to escape from a couple days ago when a punk kid captured a bunch of them and, instead of releasing them, threw a bunch of rocks into the bucket with live crawdads and ensured they were ground up before dumping the remains back into the creek.
The fledgling bird was one of three that was in a nest nearby. The nest was destroyed by punk kids and the birds went missing. One showed up a few days ago with a snapped neck and no one with the proper tools came to pick up its body, and so it’s been rotting near the creek. I have no clue where the other one is. This one stops and stares at people hopefully and helplessly, getting very close as if asking for help but also too scared to allow people close enough to touch it.
So don’t give me shit for talking to animals when people judge and criticize for me showing kindness, or even doing my daily activities out and about. Don’t you fucking dare give me shit. I talk to animals because they’re kind and simply want to exist, and yet are attacked like this without reason.
They deserve whatever kindness they can get.
