Mere Katherine
A Journey to Find Myself in the Animal World
“Why do you say ‘Feather’ so often?” Alice asked at last, rather vexed. “I’m not a bird!” “You are,” said the Sheep: “You’re a little goose.”
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, p. 203
**Footnotes are at the end.
I clicked the play button under the course documents menu, and the audio began. And my quest began. And I wondered when the drum beats would
ever stop! When I was told to find a crevice to fall into, I instantly imagined Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland, the one filled with treehouses and secret underground passages. Natural? Maybe not. I could see the Haunted Mansion across the lake in the background and people moving en masse to all corners of the park or no spot in particular. Some stopped to watch the elaborate white paddlewheel boat, the
Mark Twain, turn around a corner in the lake. Disneyland wasn’t why I was there, however. I turned and descended the sandy steps of the entrance to the cave (holding onto the handrail), watched my head at the low entryway, and walked on through a tunnel that was impossibly long into the “proverbial light.” (Animal quest audio)
I emerged in a quite different place, a forest I later realized was the one my cousins and I had visited in Maumee Bay, Ohio.
The forest was quiet and primeval, reminiscent of a time when “humanity recognized itself as part of nature, and nature as part of itself.” (Anthology 415) Sunlight struggled to light the ground, blocked by a cover of leaves, and even more leaves covered the forest floor. They crunched beneath my feet as I walked, and insects of all kinds scattered with every step, in all directions. I wondered for a moment if they were my power animal. But I am neither the ant nor the grasshopper. I continued to walk. Moments later a rabbit emerged to my left. He stopped, startled—as did I—and lifted his head cautiously to sniff my leg. I didn’t reach out to him as I normally would have but stood still instead, waiting for us to grow comfortable with each other. That rabbit stayed with me until the end of the animal quest. I suppose he was my totem animal.
But the suppose was a big deal. I like rabbits, I suppose. I could identify with them, I suppose, if I thought about it long enough. But I didn’t want to suppose, I wanted to know. Animals have been such a big part of life: there had to be an animal which had chosen me, and “not the other way around,” (Anthology 417) one that would come to me as I thought about it now, not in a forced audio, the drums beating out decide.decide.decide!
I decided I needed to go on my own animal quest, through my experiences at Natural Encounters, a place filled with animals that have shaped my life. I worked with so many in Natural Encounters: tropical birds, long-necked turtles, African ground squirrels so fast you’d swear they were supersonic, an armadillo obsessed with feet. It was going to be very hard to find my totem animal when so many comparisons could be made: Well, there are those four-eyed fish, and I have glasses, so maybe…that could work? But there were some animals in particular that came to mind.
Clarke was one of my favorites. He lived in Holding
[1], aged beyond reason—a
slow slow loris. I loved the days I got to feed him, holding out soaked monkey biscuits and fruits one by one. With intense concentration, he worked out his strategy each time…raised his hand…..…and grabbed for it! He then eased himself back into his perch, like a favorite armchair, and munched on his snacks with both hands. With his graying, buzzed fur, he reminded me of a retired army general—but he was not my totem animal.
The other primates were so human (as much as I try not to anthropomorphize)
that it would be too difficult to call them my totem animal. I could sense them watching every move I made as I worked in the back area of the rainforest. They were indelibly curious. Whenever I interacted with them, unlike with the other animals, I didn’t smile. It would have profaned the experience. I can still remember the douricouli brothers, side-by-side as they always were, their faces, ridiculously overdrawn like mimes’, asking the question, “Who
are you?”
And that is the question, isn’t it? Who am I? Or, for the purposes of this, who am I at the zoo? Who do I resonate with? “When [I] visit the zoo, which animal do [I] wish to visit the most or first?” (Anthology 416) And that, the final question, was it—a meerkat!
One bench—the right one—in front of the meerkat exhibit is my favorite spot at the Houston Zoo. I could literally spend afternoons there, watching the goings-on of Houston’s meerkat mob.
[2] I love watching the sentry
[3] who alerts the mob whenever a hawk or helicopter comes into view, laughing at those lounging and fighting in the sun, watching the progression of tunnels. These are my totem animals.
An obvious statement but a necessary one needs to be made. I am
not a meerkat. We are not even very similar, but I suppose that’s not the true purpose of a totem animal. They are meant to augment your life not mirror it. A study of an animal’s talents can reveal “the kind of medicine, magic, and power it can help you to develop within your own life.” (Anthology 417) In my study of the meerkat’s talents, I looked to their behavior, their “meerkat manner” if you will, as a guide to understanding myself. (And I promise I won’t make any references to one particular meerkat from a certain Disney movie we all know and love
[4]!)
Meerkats are very social animals. They’re altruistic, looking out for one another, taking turns standing guard and watching the young. I am not as social as the meerkats are, at least not as constantly social. Maybe that’s why I like watching them so much. It is from seeing them interact that I can draw strength and remind myself how much I need and want people in my life. Sometimes it is all too easy to feel like you’re not one of the “mob” or resign yourself to the fact that you don’t need to be—in all honesty, though, the importance of social interaction to the meerkats is just the same for me. Like the meerkats I need to feel like I’m a part of something: I came to find my theater and a cappella groups in high school as my extended family, and I’m already looking forward to how close our class will grow to be.
Whenever I would watch the meerkat community, it sprawled like a metropolis. Some were slouched up against the shaded wall, one was presumably at the top of the termite mound scanning the skies, others fought, chattering excitedly
and tumbling across the dirt—still others were out of sight in their system of tunnels
[5]. Meerkats burrow for protection and sleep in their tunnels at night. Whenever the sentry sees danger, he alerts the mob which scampers into the tunnels for protection. I have seen this whenever a particularly loud airplane flies over the zoo, an average afternoon instantly interrupted by a mad dash to the tunnels. Although I prefer to explore as the meerkats do, and spend my days playing or working hard in the outside world, I still will always have my “burrows” to go back to: my home and my rationality. I know my family will always support me, through all circumstances—in that way they are my constant protection, and I am very grateful. I also protect myself with an at times annoyingly persistent practical side, the
“Are you sure you should be going out? You have work to do…” Disclaimer: The following comment is a bit immature, but I felt it needed to be said—or maybe I just wanted it to be said. Bear with me. Meerkats have latrines, a communal restroom. It always made cleaning up so much simpler with everything lumped together. Do you see where I’m going with this? I keep all my problems, the bad, the stress and frustrations—the crap—in one place too. I tend to bottle my emotions and ignore problems, sometimes never addressing the big problems at all! This is a problem in itself, but it seems to be working out for the meerkats…
Another problem I identify with the meerkats is overgrooming. I don’t mean worrying over my appearance too much—obviously, as the amount of contact-less and careless days I’ve already compiled my first weeks of college can show you! But if you look carefully at some of the meerkats in the mob, you can see that bits of their tails are missing so that some don’t end in a point but abruptly. Guests would always ask us what had happened to them. Their mother
[6] had simply groomed them too much, had paid them too much attention, when they were younger. Like their mother, my mother has always been well-intentioned, but I have been, at times, overgroomed. When I was younger, I liked to spend a lot of time at home. While I was always pushed to excel, I was never really pushed out of the house. I am glad I found a sense of adventure on my own. Starting college, I now realize how much more I need to learn. (The laundry, for instance, was a big one, but I love doing it now!) More seriously though, I have discovered how much I can improve. In writing and study habits, in taking care of myself and remembering to eat when I have work to do, and in making friends—and a new life.
Whenever I think of meerkats, I imagine the sentries. Their focus and stamina, their uncompromised gaze, is an image of strength. While the other meerkats are relaxing or playing, foraging or digging, they look above. They are utterly focused. I feel that sometimes in the way that I look at the future, as open as the skies. I have such big ideas about what I want to accomplish and am determined to accomplish them all. I stand on duty for my future, looking into the above, into the exciting unknown—with, of course, my precautionary sunglasses, like the meerkat’s black circled eyes
[7]. Other times, though, I am the other meerkats: hard at work, playing with the others and
occasionally lying out in the sun for a much needed nap.
Word count: 1996 (without quotes)Works Cited
Bump, Jerome, ed. Composition and Reading in World Literature Anthology. Austin: Jenn's Copy & Binding , 2009.
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (from The Annotated Alice). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. September 5, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat (accessed September 21, 2009).
Photos
Disneyland: my personal collection
Sentry:
http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/meerkats.jpgFootnotes[1] Where animals not on display were kept in Natural Encounters
[2] “A group of meerkats is called a mob, gang or clan. A meerkat clan often contains about 20 meerkats at a time, but some superfamilies have had 50 or more.” (courtesy of wikipedia.org) My first year at Natural Encounters, there were 14 adults, but I think it’s grown much larger since then.
[3] The meerkat on guard duty. They stand on their hind legs and scan the skies looking for danger. Sentry duty is approximately one hour long. (Wikipedia.org)
[4] Interestingly enough, I identify with warthogs, too. Once I was at the Fort Worth Zoo with my mom when it began pouring. She and I were quickly walking past the exhibits, when we stopped at the warthog’s. He was running in crisscrosses across the exhibit, splashing in the mud and clearly enjoying the rain. We stayed there to watch him even while we were getting drenched. It was an example of pure and spontaneous joy, and since then I’ve loved warthogs. Warthogs and meerkats…what a coincidence!
[5] The tunnel systems at the Houston Zoo are very elaborate and done entirely by the meerkat colony, but they are never able to last for very long. Whenever I worked with the meerkats, I had to become an amateur meteorologist, constantly scanning the radars for impending rain. If it looked like it was coming overnight, we’d have to stomp down and re-shovel all of the dirt to prevent tunnels from caving in and drowning any of them. I felt awful doing it, a barbarian razing an innocent town, but nevertheless the meerkats always went right back to digging the next morning.
[6] All meerkats in a mob (should) have the same mother, the alpha-female.
[7] Meerkats have black patches around their eyes which work like football player’s stripes to deflect the sun’s rays.
Plan II students are enthused by the prospect of education for education's sake, of learning a whole wealth of information and acquiring new skills.
