- A couple of months ago, I wrote about the canine friend
I called the Navajo Dog.
-
- About the mystical way she came into my life.
-
- Since then, I've heard similar stories of magical human/pet
connections from many readers:
-
- The couple in Connecticut who heard a dog howling outside
their house and went out to see what was wrong. Who found nothing out there,
right or wrong, and went back inside only to discover a bedraggled puppy
waiting in their living room.
-
- The little girl in Illinois who accompanied her mother
into a mall pet shop for fish food. And came out with a kitten because
as soon as it saw her, the little ball of fluff launched itself from the
crate it was in and landed squarely on top of the little girl's head. Where
it yowled and cried, but never left a scratch, and where it still likes
to snuggle up at night to this day.
-
- The teenage boy in Pennsylvania who heard someone - or
something - calling to him from the woods and found an injured raccoon.
A raccoon that stayed with him as the teen's pet for the rest of its life.
And never once behaved like anything but a friend.
-
- The South African woman who awoke one morning to find
a large parrot clinging to the chair before her dressing table. A parrot
that called the woman by name, sang what sounded like an aria and practically
lived on her shoulder for over 20 years.
-
- Then there was the California man who'd never been near
a horse but had loved reading about them as a kid. "One day, while
I was driving along the freeway," he wrote, "I got a feeling
that I should get off at the next exit. I did, and saw a sign for an Arabian
horse ranch. I drove to the ranch, and, to make a long story short, I saw
one of those miniature horses running in a corral.
-
- "The next afternoon that horse was in my backyard.
In the years since, he's been a great friend. He doesn't eat all that much,
my kids love him, and I haven't had to worry about any of us breaking our
necks while learning how to ride."
-
- My favorite, though, is My Friend the Shark Wrangler.
Well, actually, he's a friend, but I never knew he was a shark wrangler
until he called about what I'd written.
-
- "Know how some hotels have dolphin pools that people
can swim in?" he said. "And how some people seem to have some
kind of special connection to the dolphins so that as soon as these people
get into the pool the dolphins race over to them and play like they're
old friends?
-
- "Well, I love to scuba dive, and one day about 15
years ago that love got me into big trouble. I was in the Navy, taking
some R&R in Australia, diving near the Great Barrier Reef. All of a
sudden, my buddy grabs my arm, and I look up at these two shadows passing
over us."
-
- "Sharks?" I said.
-
- "Black Tip reef sharks," he said. "My
buddy and I froze, but it was too late. They saw us or smelled us or whatever,
and circled back our way. One of them came right to my side, and I thought
I was dinner for sure. But all it did was nudge me. The other one went
a little farther. Started rubbing against me.
-
- "They ignored my buddy and started playing with
me. Zipping over my shoulders. Coming up under my legs. It was like finding
out that somebody's big, scary watchdog loved me!
-
- "I stopped being scared and went with it. I even
grabbed one by the dorsal fin and let it pull me. My buddy took pictures
of me swimming around with these two sharks like they were long lost pets
for about half an hour. Until they zoomed off after something else.
-
- "It was so much fun that I was sorry to see them
go. And I could swear that they were sorry they had to leave."
-
- He e-mailed me scans of the pictures, so I know this
is true. A man and his two dorsal-finny friends.
-
- Animal magic.
-
- Connection magic.
-
- I should've felt, deep inside my soul, that neither the
Navajo Dog nor I could really be unique.
-
- I should've known it would be everywhere.
-
-
- Copyright C 2008 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
|
