A Tale With Lessons for Both Sexes

Male readers: At first several glances, “Intimate Nature--The Bond Between Women and Animals,” edited by Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger and Brenda Peterson (Fawcett Columbine, 1998, $27) is gonna strike you as pretentious, portentous and sappy.

You’re gonna get the willies reading about the sensitive artiste who seems to mistake her llama for her therapist, or the ego-unbalanced naifs who assert that some creature has come to them with a special message from the collective cosmic soul. And, yeah, the unsigned introduction is as goofy as all get out:

“Animals . . . have been here since the first sacred times of the gods and creation, from places with names as diverse as Turtle Island, Eden, Gondwana. . . . They have suffered with us, as accomplices of accused witches, as sacrificial offerings. . . .”

Cut through the New Age nuttiness, though, and you’ll find a volume rich with fine writing and fascinating thought.

Some of these writers are famous or almost so: Vicki Hearne, Leslie Silko, Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Gretel Ehrlich, Diane Ackerman, Ursula Le Guin, Denise Levertov, Alice Walker, Eloise Klein Healey, Marge Piercy, Deena Metzger, Tess Gallagher, Terry Tempest Williams.

Others are less well known. But known or not, most of the 75 writers collected here tell remarkable, genre-defying tales.

Many also defy expectations.

Temple Grandin, for instance, writes of how her autism allows her to experience life in the manner of nonhuman mammals. Raw fear, pragmatic and fleeting, is an animal emotion that the autistic person knows well, she says.

The result of Grandin’s empathy? She invented a padded chute to comfort cattle being led to slaughter.

“I am often asked how I can care about animals and be involved in their slaughter. People forget that nature can be harsh. . . . I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death, and places such as slaughterhouses.”

Slaughterhouses, she says, are hiring more and more women because of their respectful approach.

At first, readers may wonder why anyone would segregate animal stories by the writer’s gender. But these pieces offer enough evidence of gentling insight that male members of the species might take note.

Come to think of it, guys--even that llama tale has lessons for our sex.