Exploring My Animal Self

Admittedly, for my Animals, People and Things In Between assignment, I really wasn’t sure what animal I was going to choose. I took one of the (corny) okcupid.com quizzes, and found that I was actually really satisfied with the animal I seemed to identify with most: deer.

Deer are strong, yet graceful. Humble, but not easily dismissed. It seems as if their eyes see what is already familiar to them, as nothing new has been invented. Growing up in Ohio, it wasn’t uncommon to see deer somewhere in the woods, in a park, or sometimes in someone’s backyard. They simply appear at your backdoor, and yet disappear without warning. Most deer are seem pretty shy, even when they somehow manage to live in cities. Whenever I saw a deer on the side of the road, I often couldn’t tell which one of us was intruding.

My short comic on how I become a deer…
I saw a link on the birth and rescuing of a fawn, which for a while I imagined was my former life. I imagined what I would do if I were really a deer. I would go to the park and the museum, and I’d eat good food. No one would bother me, because I’m just a deer. And, deer are only easy to find when they want to be found. Eventually, I’d get tired of being a deer and I’d need to go home. So, I’d just catch a train, turn into a human, and go home.

Anyway, aside from deer I also considered two other options. Lately, I’ve been imagining myself as a cat, but as the type of mysterious, anti-social cat that runs and hides whenever you get close but whose owner swears she’s very friendly. Incidentally, my first cat was the first pet I was allowed to have that also seemed to care for me, too.

A project that sounded interesting was to imagine myself in a cage – myself as the pet. Perhaps I would get a wire cage, with sawdust, an exercise wheel and tiny human furniture. Then, to represent myself, I would create a tiny, gerbil-sized puppet of myself that would live inanimately inside the cage. It seemed intriguing to take care of my own pet self? I wonder if, as a pet, I would take better care of myself?

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