Excerpt Puppalicious and Beyond (Animal and Nonhuman Stories)
I am not a whackjob.
I am not some whacko who writes about her labradoodle Schnookums. Let’s just get that straight right off the bat. Hell, I’m practically anti-animal, and I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, either. Dogs? They shed. Poop. Pee. Barf. Drool. Chew. Bark. Cats? Ditto, except make that yowl instead of bark, plus I’m deathly allergic. That’s why currently we have only three dogs and one cat. Oh, and five fish. And I hardly even like them, except for maybe a little. We’ve cut back, too. It wasn’t so long ago the dog count was six, the cat count three, and the fish count innumerable, along with guinea pigs, birds, ducks, rabbits, and a pig. As in swine.
My most vivid memories of growing up in Wyoming and Texas are of animals. We had the normal sorts of pets, plus the absolute luxury of living in the country. I raised sheep for 4-H and rode my horse to sleepovers. We had visitors furry, feathered, and scaly, of both the hooved and clawed varieties. My husband grew up on St. Croix where the animals were different, but his wild upbringing, close to nature, matched mine. His mother tells stories of her sons bringing geckos on the plane from the island to the mainland, and finding their little skeletons outside the family’s summer home in Maine months later. Eric’s favorite photograph from his youth shows him standing on the beach holding the booby he rescued while surfing, then nursed back to health and released.
As a child, I devoured books about animals, like Black Beauty and Where the Red Fern Grows. I idolized James Herriot and Jacques Cousteau. I could never quite decide whether to be a veterinarian or a marine biologist or Shamu’s trainer. Somehow I sold out early on and became a lawyer, but that didn’t stop the animal love. There, I’ve admitted it: animal love. I ♥ animals, with a big red heart and sparkly glitter. All of them, nearly, except for maybe insects and reptiles. Also I am not a big fan of rats. But other than that, I love every one. Eric and I spend all the time we can outdoors looking for critters, whether we do it from bicycles or cars, or in the water or on our own four feet. We watch All Creatures Great and Small on Netflix. Our offspring naturally love God’s creatures, too, at least as much as they love their smartphones, and a whole lot more than they love us.
In the Virgin Islands of Eric’s youth, Christianity made plenty of room for the ghosts, spirits, and jumbies of obeah, a folk-magic religion with elements of sorcery and voodoo. The locals couldn’t comprehend why continentals like me scoffed at what was so plainly true to them, but scoff I did. Ghosts? Jumbies? As in Casper the friendly? It was hard for me to follow—until I met Eric. He and the islands opened my eyes to a world that existed just beyond the visible. Sometimes these non-humans scared me, and sometimes they comforted me. I liked my pets and the animals of the wild better, but I was captivated by the jumbies. Especially the one guarding Annaly, the house we bought in the rainforest.
When my lawyer career morphed into human resources and then I finally started writing, non-humans started spilling out of every story. Sometimes they are the stars, and sometimes they are the supporting actors. No matter their role, they always manage to steal the show from the unsuspecting humans who believe they are the center of the universe.
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Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery Page 65