If Animals Could Talk To Us
Have you ever wandered inside a zoo and wondered about animal talk? Do monkeys chatter with each other? What about birds, who according to recent research, are much smarter than we imagine? Better still, what if those creatures can talk to us? If you have harbored such fantasies, you might want to read “The Animals in That Country” by Laura Jean McKay. On the other hand, you might not. Because McKay shows us how such inter-species understanding might not be as delightful as you think.
Released during the pandemic, her novel was strangely prescient of the times we collectively lived through. Her protagonist Jean is a rather feisty and difficult grandmom, who lands up at a zoo managed by her daughter-in-law. Jean has many un-grandmotherly traits, including her alcoholism and her proclivity to mimic animal voices while guiding tourists. Angela, the daughter-in-law doesn’t approve of Jean. Especially the manner in which she talks like animals. Angela warns: “[The manual] says people who anthropomorphise tend not to read cues, and people who don’t read cues are dangerous. Dangerous to themselves, dangerous to the animals, and dangerous to visitors.”
Soon enough, Angela’s words seem to ring true. Because when Jean enters a dingo’s (a type of Australian dog/wolf) cage to help retrieve its paw from a tangle of wire, she gets bitten. It’s a wound that seems to portend the greater chaos to follow. An epidemic called Zooflu or zoanthropathy starts spreading. It’s a strange disease that imbues its sufferers with an uncanny ability: human-to-animal communication. People afflicted by Zooflu start understanding critters around them. Moreover, the disease progresses in stages. At first, they understand the animals, then the birds and finally the insects.
If you’ve felt we live in a world saturated with noise, you should be thankful that you haven’t been struck by Zooflu. Because now the cacophony is intolerable. Pigs being led to a slaughterhouse do much more than grunt. There are cries of death and murder and gore all around. Mice, who are waiting to be gassed, scream “bloody murder, the death of everyone, death in the cages and death in the walls.”
Moreover, it takes time to comprehend the animals, almost simulating the manner in which humans absorb foreign languages through immersion. Such understanding leads not just to bonds, but to distaste and revulsion. As a zoo employee puts it, “I’m not hanging around here for some crumbly crocodile to start talking.”
Other people feel equally disenchanted with the new world. Some even run away from their pets, or kill them. But how do you elude night-time mosquitoes who might target you with Dracula-like cries for your “Blood”? For once, you might yearn instead for their annoying high-pitched whines. Unsurprisingly, what human miss most is their inability to dominate the other species. After all, it’s language that gives rise to talking back and dissent.
Jean, who sort of wants to get the flu, eventually catches it. And like all the others, she doesn’t immediately ‘get’ the animal talk. Not right away, anyway, till she embarks on a road trip with Sue, the dingo. She’s trying to catch up with Kimberley, her granddaughter, who was hoisted to the coast by her no-good son to listen to whale songs. The trip, which forms the bulk of the story, is a bit like the Thelma and Louise camaraderie that builds up over the roughs of experience. Except here, it’s between a human being and a talking animal.
When Jean runs out of fuel in the countryside, the crows hanging about power lines observe, “We can’t eat/ it yet.” She realizes with growing horror that they are talking about her, waiting for her to turn into a tasty meal that they can tuck (peck) into. Animals refer to humans as “it”, in perhaps, a well-deserved overturning of power relations.
You ought to read this book not just to inhabit the interiority of a very inventive writer, but also to contemplate the manner in which the Anthropocene might get toppled. Maybe, future revolutions might cross cultural and biological boundaries. After all, other forms of consciousness are also witnessing the planet’s erosion. They might put forth their views in ways that would be, to phrase it mildly, discomfiting to us.
References
Laura Jean McKay, The Animals in That Country, Scribe Publications, 2020