Shhh. We're hunting wabbits.

[osprey_archer]

I feel surprisingly melancholy about leaving campus. There is just something unbearably sad about the bare white cinderblock walls and everything done up in boxes and missing people over the summer.

But I am so ready to be home. I’m having a homecoming party with a chocolate cake and cookies (many, many cookies, because I am the cookie GODDESS) and I will be so busy baking that I probably won’t post again until Saturday. (I know. What will you do without my entries to brighten your dull days?)

***

We have baby bunnies on campus. They are the cutest little tiny balls of fluff ever, all bouncy and cuddly-looking and so tame that they’ll let you walk right up to them. I want to kidnap one. Dorothea (she of the “Save the bunnies” campaign) is game, but my roommate objects. :(

When I was younger I desperately loved telepathic companion animal stories: the dragonriders of Pern, the daemons in the Golden Compass, the Unicorns of Balinor, Temeraire. My parents refused to get me a puppy (I probably would have lost interest when I finally resigned myself to the fact that it was never going to talk to me) so I had to invent an entire system of telepathic companion animals myself.

It grew into an entire army (deployed only for idealistic peace-keeping purposes, like a magic UN) where all the soldiers had their own telepathic companion animals. Dogs and wolves for infantry, horses for cavalry, cats and foxes for scouts, hawks and eagles and ospreys for archers.



Of course there are always problems. What if you end up bonding to, like, a snake, or something else totally without cuddle factor? There could always be a Magical Rule of Fluff Factor, which states that only adorable creatures have telepathic abilities.

Maybe that’s why they’re so adorable—it’s the telepathic vibes of cuteness! (Just look at the kitten in the icon. Tell me there's not something uncanny about how cute it is.)

Suddenly, I’m starting to worry what those bunnies might be planning. Given their telepathic weaponry, total adorableness, and the fact that there are approximately five hundred of them on campus, they could wreak havoc.

Maybe that’s the real reason why telepathic companion animals are willing to leave their habitats and their wolf packs and what have you behind. It’s a secret conspiracy to overthrow humanity by insinuating themselves into our affections and then rising up in a blaze of fur and teeth and—

Except it would be kind of hard to hide your secret evil conspiracy from your telepathic companion human. Probably. And the copious food would win most of the little fur balls over, right?

Speaking of food, I think it would be kind of hard to keep a multi-national peace-keeping coalition with platoons of jaguars and grizzly bears in meat. None of the countries are going to be really excited about supplying food, given that they’re basically paying to be invaded, so the peace-keeping forces will have to plunder, which kind of destroys the point.

This is a serious geopolitical problem, but there are workarounds (most of which involve hand-waving how the system got started, but now that it’s in place everyone recognizes that it’s better than war, so they pay up.) It was the psychological problem that eventually killed off the system. Namely: what do you do when your telepathic companion animal dies and leaves you ALL ALONE in the cold, hard, cruel world?

Theoretically, acquiring a new telepathic companion animal could mitigate these consequences, but promiscuously swapping one telepathic companion animal for another sort of ruins the charm.

Unfortunately if you can’t swap new companion animals, then there are really only three options, all of the unattractive.

a) Once your companion animal dies you can live the rest of your life all alone, completely miserable because you know longer have the magical soul connection to sustain you. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost totally does not apply here.

b) You can die with your companion animal, which is severely unattractive given this means you probably won’t live past the age of forty, and that’s if you’re lucky and bond to something long-lived like an osprey or a cat and it doesn’t die in battle.

c) You can bond to a tortoise, and can therefore live as long as you like. But who would want to bond to a tortoise? They just are not cuddly.

So I bid the system good bye. I still miss it sometimes—there’s just something so attractive about giving characters their own personal totem animal. And what better way is there to get through a boring class than to imagine telepathic companion animals for your classmates?

I used to like to think I’d have a fox. Or a cat. Dorothea could have a bunny, though. And Veni could have a dog—one of those very enthusiastic relatively good sized ones, that go out on walks and yank at their leashes and want to smell everything and lick everyone, and cries of “Veni! The dining hall is closing in ten minutes! We have to keep moving!” avail you nothing.

Did anyone else want telepathic companion animals when they were younger?

Comments

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

now i wish i wanted telephathic companion animals when i was younger. ; )

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Well, you know. You could always pretend.

Sadly, I don't know you well enough to guess what your telepathic companion animal would be. Although I did once read about an elephant named Siri who drew beautiful abstract paintings, which is artistic, which reminds me of you.

Or maybe a raven, because of your ginormous collection of shiny icons. :)

[troublems03.livejournal.com]

I talked to my cat and pretended that she talked back if it counts. In fact, I used to hold whole conversations with her. The best thing about it? She always seemed to agree with me. Funny that. And now that she's really old she has become contrary and likes to disagree all the time. Perhaps I am no longer deluded.

(That said, I do talk to my goldfish all the time. They're great conversationalists.)

[anait.livejournal.com]

I wanted a black panther. Not that I am remotely panther-like. I just thought it would be a good friend.

I also used to be crazy about horses and dogs when I was small. I started reading novels when I was really young, and if it didn't have a dog or a horse on the cover, it wasn't worth my time. None of the fictional animals were telepathic though-- the writers were sadly deficient that way.

[anait.livejournal.com]

And happy home-going!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I used to have bettas, but they never talked back to me. They just wibbled around in the fish tank, unless I held up a mirror and then they tried to fight with their reflections. Perhaps goldfish are more talkative.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read the Saddle Club books? I adored the Saddle Club books. I remember buying the first one in Toronto and reading it on the plane back and being totally engrossed and desperately wanting to ride horses.

That didn't work out so well when I finally did it, though.

You didn't ever run across the telepathic companion animal books, though? That's so sad.

When I was very young, I did want a big cat. Not a panther, though; a tiger, or possibly a clouded leopard because their fur is so pretty.

But then I discovered foxes and my heart was entirely given. Not red foxes, but fennec foxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fennec_Fox_%40_Africa_Alive%2C_Lowestoft.jpg) (they have giant ears! They're like elf foxes!) and kit foxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vulpes_macrotis_mutica_sitting.jpg), because they're so small and yet so smart and tough, and they have sharp little faces and thick fur.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I wonder, sometimes, if the animals have a pretty good idea of what we are thinking, and that's why they leave talking to us.

That has never stopped me from having long and involved chats with my cat, though. I just supply both sides of the conversation. And I had many imaginary, talking pets in years gone by, including a red mouse and various horses.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

hm. or perhaps a hummingbird, because i'm slightly hyperactive...plus birds are just awesome.

[anait.livejournal.com]

I did read many of the Saddle Club books. Also Black Beauty, the Black Stallion books, Marguerite Henry's horse books, Jim K-something's gazillion hunting dog books, Lassie, and I still read Where the Red Fern Grows every few years.

I have read telepathic companion animal books, but they were all when I was older (except for C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, if you count those-- lots of speaking animals): Phillip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, and mostly Anne McCaffery. I think Temeraire actually speaks out loud to whoever he chooses. Anne is the clear winner, because she has not only telepathic dragons, but also telepathic people, omnisicent talking companion spaceships, singing crystal and an omniscient telepathic planet. Oh, Anne.

Fennec foxes are very cute! And now I know why your lj-name is what it is. :)

[anait.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, which has some of the best talking animals around. Bagheera! That's probably where I got the black panther idea.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hummingbirds are full of awesome.

Also, because I just found it this morning: pictures of white hummingbirds (http://www.hummingbirds.net/albino.html). Because they're adorable; they look like fairies.

I think, though, you would probably be a hummingbird with colored feathers.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's the kind of thing a cat would do--know what we're thinking and be amused and not deign to talk to us--but I think dogs would try to help their people out.

So maybe cats are telepathic and dogs aren't?

I have met cats who I really, really would not want to be telepathic, though. So it's kind of a frightening thought.

Was there any special reason why the mouse was red?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Anne McCaffrey is clearly obsessed with the whole telepathy thing.

You're right, Temeraire does speak out loud. But he's like a telepathic companion animal. Wasn't there at least some kind of empathy bond? Or was dragon imprinting in the Temeraire books really kind of like duck imprinting, with no telepathy involved?

Are the second and third books any good? I only read the first and I liked it but did not adore. But now it's summer, and I have so much time (at least until I get a job...)

Hee--I wondered if anyone would catch the reference to my LJ name. If I chose it now I probably would get something less...I'm not sure what the proper adjective is--but I got the name loooooong before I posted anything on the journal.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there was, but I can't remember for the life of me now. I was 8, I think. He did have very large ears, though...

[ochre54.livejournal.com]

So.. I didn't really want to have a companion animal. But I talked to my stuffed animals in my head all the time. I think they only answered sparringly. Like, *really* sparringly.

Somehow this expanded to the point where I talk telepathically at people all the time and forget that they can't hear. It's a problem. Um..

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I did have teddy bears--one particular teddy bear, actually. Who rarely answered me but did go on awesome teddy bear adventures.

I occasionally have entire conversations with people in my head, which they don't notice, which is very unfortunate. The nice thing about livejournal is that I can go back and check whether I actually responded to X comment, because it might have just happened in my head.

[ochre54.livejournal.com]

I know, right?? How so convenient, lj!

[anait.livejournal.com]

Yes, Temeraire did have imprinting when he hatched, but no telepathy. I read the 1st and 2nd books and thought they were okay, but didn't love them enough to buy the third. Jane Yolen (YA fantasy writer) had dragons with imprinting and telepathy, and they also had pit-fighting (dragons) and a slave (boy) trying to earn enough money to buy his freedom. Her trilogy was kind of strange, but in a good way. I'd read that over the Temeraire books-- I tried those because I liked the author's SGA fanfic.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

wow, they are very cool! but i think i would have to be a colored hummingbird, too. most likely a multi-colored hummingbird. ; )

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've read the Jane Yolen's--at least the first two--I kind of bombed out after they spent the night in the dragon's ribcage and came out covered with blood and the world was rainbow colored.

I do remember being pleased that he didn't select the runt dragon. It seemed like a more reasonable way for a slave to behave--a slave wouldn't be all sentimental and take the weakling, he'd go for the power.

[team-fen.livejournal.com]

Yes, the sequels got really trippy. I liked the first one best. Weird as it was, I still enjoyed it more as a series than the Temeraire books.