P. Kirby’s Reviews > How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals > Status Update
P. Kirby
is 53% done
My love for my dog and my pig burned ever brighter as they aged. There was no darkness we couldn't navigate together. But what about when Chris and Tess were gone?
— Jan 11, 2019 11:19AM
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P. Kirby
is 73% done
Experiments I had read about, conducted at the Seattle Aquarium, proved that octopuses can and do recognize individual humans, even when the people are identically dressed and even when the octopuses are simply looking up through the water at them.
— Jan 11, 2019 11:24AM
P. Kirby
is 70% done
This is the gift great souls leave us when they die. They enlarge our hearts. They leave us a greater capacity for love.
— Jan 11, 2019 11:22AM
P. Kirby
is 54% done
After Chris, and too soon afterward, Tess had died, the one thing that kept me going was the comforting thought that I could kill myself.
This. So understand this.
— Jan 11, 2019 11:20AM
This. So understand this.
P. Kirby
is 51% done
To me, one of the most heartbreaking conditions of life on Earth is that most of the animals we love, [...] die so long before we do. I used to joke with friends as I left for trips to land with poisonous snakes, man-eating carnivores, and active landmines that I was trying to make sure I predeceased Chris and Tess. But I deeply dreaded being left behind when Chris and Tess passed on.
— Jan 11, 2019 11:17AM
P. Kirby
is on page 46 of 165
...my mother clenched her slender, manicured hand into a claw adn took a swipe at my face. I caught her delicate wrist in midair. She had swung at me so hard that my hand, stopping hers, left a bruise on her skin. My father made me apologize to her.
Wow! What a fucked up family. No wonder she prefers animals to people.
— Jan 10, 2019 02:10PM
Wow! What a fucked up family. No wonder she prefers animals to people.
P. Kirby
is on page 43 of 165
Now, thanks to Clarabelle [the tarantula], even the most ordinary corner 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.
— Jan 10, 2019 02:05PM
P. Kirby
is on page 42 of 165
I still love to look at the hands of those kids: brown hands, pink hand, gently cupped to welcome the footfall of a creature [a spider] that some of them had only moments earlier viscerally feared. [...] That day, I hear a little girl in neat pigtails murmur, almost under her breath, "Elle est belle, le monstre." She is beautiful, the monster.
— Jan 10, 2019 02:03PM
P. Kirby
is on page 40 of 165
Despite spiders' reputations as dirty, nasty "bugs," tarantulas are as immaculate as cats, carefully cleaning any dirt that falls on their bodies by meticulously drawing the hairs on their legs through the mouth, using their fangs like the teeth of a comb.
— Jan 10, 2019 02:00PM
P. Kirby
is on page 39 of 165
And then something magical happened. Holding her in my hand, I could literally feel a connection with this creature. No longer did I see her as a really big spider; now I saw her as a small animal.
— Jan 10, 2019 01:58PM
