Sometimes, Talking With Animals Goes Without Saying

Many people feel a slight inclination to mock and deride the odd, the unnatural, the unexplained. For some of us . . . uh, for some people . . . it is much more than an inclination. It is an overwhelming urge, a compulsion so pungent we . . . uh, they . . . can taste it.

And so a person like that meets Maureen Hall of Sylmar, animal trainer extraordinaire and self-professed telepathic communicator with every furry, feathered and shell-encased creature that barks, whinnies, bleats, chirps, walks or crawls. And the powerful urge comes to roll the eyes back and make small circular motions with an index finger pointed at the temple.

They want to shout loon at this woman who claims to talk with dogs and horses and even cockroaches, to heap their skepticism and cynicism upon her and then get on with their disbelieving lives.

Let her chat with Rover all day long if she wants, perhaps over coffee and biscuits; have a party catered by Ralston-Purina, for that matter.

But then there is this: Maureen Hall’s animals do startling, amazing things. In nearly 40 years as a trainer, she has persuaded animals to do remarkably un-animal-like tricks.

She taught a horse to flip burgers with a spatula and to put laundry soap into a washing machine. She has persuaded birds to play a piano and even taught a chicken to play baseball, stopping short, fortunately, of teaching it how to scratch like a baseball player.

She had a poodle who rode a bicycle for 15 years (OK, he used training wheels) and a horse, Whiskey, who could play “Goodnight Ladies” and the theme from “The Tonight Show” on an organ.

All, she says, because she was able to talk to them, to find out what they wanted to do and to persuade them, through actual conversations, to work hard at these tricks.

She . . .

Hey, you got your head stuck in the little ceramic scuba diver, you get it unstuck, OK?

Geez. Goldfish. Are they stupid, or what? Sorry about the distraction.

For decades, she has put horses and birds and dogs on television, in movies and commercials. (Curiously enough, only one horse says he wants to direct.) When Hollywood wants a domestic animal actor, Hall is among the few trainers who gets a call.

“From the earliest age, from the time I was 2, animals were able to understand me,” says Hall, 54. “I never thought it was unusual. I thought everybody was able to talk with animals. The words flow so freely between me and animals. The words and the electrical energy that brings the pictures from me to them and from them to me.”

No, I don’t have a fur ball. It’s a congestive cough. I’m taking antibiotics. Go eat a mouse.

Cats. Is there even one who doesn’t think it knows everything?

Anyway, Hall has taught classes in animal behavior and telepathy for more than 20 years. She was all set to teach a telepathy course at Mission College in Sylmar this month, but after only two would-be students signed up to listen to Tabby’s inner musings, the class was canceled.

Go figure.

Her students, she says, are often stunned by their success.

“A woman had a dog ready for a dog show, and that day the animal started acting ill,” Hall recalls. “So the woman sits and talks to him, and suddenly she feels a burning sensation in her own stomach. She gives the dog some Pepto-Bismol and 10 minutes later he’s back to normal again. The dog had an upset stomach, and he told her what the problem was.”

But there’s more here than just talking to a dog with gas.

You can, Hall says, talk to anything that’s alive.

You can . . .

Yeah, I know you’re thinking of eating the leaves on my shrubs. And I’m thinking about throw i ng a handful of salt on you. Now get outta here , you little slime ball.

Garden slugs. Think they own the place. Sorry.

Anyway, you can, Hall says, even talk to bugs.

“Most especially bugs,” she says. “Insects really respond when you try to reach them because they didn’t believe you ever cared about them. They are overwhelmed by this contact.”

A former student, she says, had a problem with cockroaches in her apartment. With Hall’s guidance, the woman sat on the floor and talked to the cockroaches. Told them she respected their tenacity and ability to endure, but that the apartment was where she raised her family and the cockroaches were simply going to have to find a place of their own.

“The next day, the cockroaches were gone,” Hall remembers. “Not a single one. And they never came back.”

Obviously, the Orkin bug-killing people are suppressing these kinds of stories. When persuasion works, poison seems a bit harsh now, doesn’t it?

Hall accepts disbelievers.

“They used to bother me,” she says. “But not anymore. Some people just aren’t ready for this.”

Most aren’t. I’m a bit uneasy with those people who become absolute believers. Unsettled that they will learn and practice this art of deep and detailed telepathic communication with the wild kingdom.

For them, I fear.

Because once they cross that line, they know deep in their hearts that it’s only a tiny step further into that sparkling, mystical place where people take seriously the U.S. Senate chances of Sonny Bono.