Will We Listen to the Animals?

In recent days here in Seattle, days with weird weather (we've already neared or reached June's average rainfall) and ping-ponging temps, my wife and I and some friends have noticed birds acting strangely. We heard a gull crying incessantly as it soared overhead, almost as if it were caught in an aberrant wind current and was screaming for help. It kept flapping and flapping, maintaining its position, calling out. A friend said he had noticed sparrows coming up to him in the park, not looking for handouts but just sitting there quietly. On Saturday we saw eagles, herons and crows doing battle -- not quite as odd because they try to protect their nests this time of year. Accounting for the fact that birds can be unpredictable and we don't understand their behavior, it still seems we're noticing unusual patterns.

We all know about animals acting strangely before a natural disaster such as an earthquake. My favorite story came after the tsunami, where the elephants tried to warn an unheeding village. Finally the elephants pulled up their posts and headed for the hills, and many of the villagers "got it."

There's enough evidence that PBS put together a documentary on the subject, and the Web is full of references to the phenomenon.

In the U.S. we're woefully unprepared to pay attention to animal behavior. Most of the time we want them to just get out of the way. Nature's built-in alarm system has little impact; even when rising global temperatures bring bark beetle infestations of vast forestlands, we blame the insects.

Maybe with rising "green consciousness" we'll be able to attune to nature's signals better. I guess the question then becomes, even if we get the message, what will we actually do about it?

-- Paul Andrews, GreenforGood

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