How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

by Sy Montgomery

Each individual is a marvel and perfect in his or her own way. Just being with any animal is edifying, for each has a knowing that surpasses human understanding.

Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.

To begin to understand the life of any animal demands not only curiosity, not only skill, and not only intellect. I saw that I would also need to summon the bond I had forged with Molly. I would need to open not only my mind, but also my heart.

What were we going to “do” with him? people would ask. “I’m a vegetarian and my husband is Jewish,” I’d explain. “We’re certainly not going to eat him. But we might send him abroad for university studies

He taught us how to love. How to love what life gives you. Even when life gives you slops.”

Studying at the cloven feet of this porcine Buddha every day, I could not help but learn from a master how to revel in and savor this world’s abundance: the glow of warm sun on skin, the joy of playing with children. Also, his big heart, and huge body, made my sorrows seem smaller.

Now, thanks to Clarabelle, even the most ordinary corners of our home were freshly enchanted. The world, I realized, brimmed even fuller with life than I had suspected, rich with the souls of tiny creatures who may love their lives as much as we love ours.

She never played favorites. If we were out together, or with visitors, she would always alternate between people, handing the toy back to first one person, then the next. She loved the game so much, I think, that she assumed we must too, so she kept track out of a sense of fairness. Nobody should be left out. If she had summoned Howard to play earlier, while we were working, she would pick me an hour later.

Deaf and going blind, she could no longer play Frisbee. The ball held no interest. My heart ached—and at first, I thought it ached for her. Surely, I thought, she must miss our hikes, our hours of play, racing across the field to catch the ball and the Frisbee. I was wrong. The heartache was my own. I was the one who longed for those younger, stronger days, for the magic of her more-than-human gifts of hearing frequencies I could not detect, seeing with surety in the dark. I missed traveling in the slipstream of her superpowers. I was sad—but Tess was not. One look at her showed she was happy. Her tail wagged. Her smile, her ears, her composure, all radiated contentment. Tess didn’t feel like chasing or leaping. Life was still rich and interesting, redolent with scent, and full of tasty treats and the comfort of being with those she loved.

Killing myself would only deflect my pain onto those I loved—the last thing in the world I’d have intended.

These two animals carried within them the wild heart that beats inside all creatures—the wildness we honor in our breath and our blood, that wildness that keeps us on this spinning planet. Here in the cloud forest, I found again the wildness that keeps us sane and whole, the wild, delicious hunger for life.

“Oh, but you do feel them,” he said gently. “What you are feeling when you miss them is not their absence. It’s their presence.”

So why would an octopus want to be friends with a person? The answer, I think, is to play with us.

In each caress, each cleaning, each hour of steadfast protection of this mother’s eggs, I could see the ancient shape of life’s first love.

Thousands of billions of mothers—from the gelatinous ancestors of Octavia, to my own mother—have taught their kind to love, and to know that love is the highest and best use of a life. Love alone matters, and makes its object worthy. And love is a living thing, even if Octavia’s eggs were not. Molly. Christopher. Tess . . . all were no longer living, yet I loved them no less. And, I realized, too soon, Octavia herself would be no more. But love never dies, and love always matters.

“The universe,” he’s reported to have said, “is alive, and has fire in it, and is full of gods.” Being friends with an octopus—whatever that friendship meant to her—has shown me that our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom—and is far more vibrant, far more holy, than we could ever imagine.

You never know, even when life looks hopeless, what might happen next. It could be that something wonderful is right around the corner.