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Tai Moses' writing, as readers of her work at Santa Cruz publications like The Sun and Metro Santa Cruz know, floats above the everyday. In this book of essays on human relationships with animals, the Oakland-based author touches on science, philosophy, humanism and Buddhistic principles as she explores her own and other peoples' attitudes and communications with some of the many other sentient residents of Planet Earth.
From Zooburbia:
I had always thought of rats as fidgety, but these rats were calm. They seemed content to rest in the shade. As I gently stroked the top of the gray rat's head, I noticed the glassy surface of the lake and the snowy egret standing motionless at the edge, its gaze focused on the water. The ever-present anxieties that scurry about in the back of my mind began to swim away, like silvery fishes scattering into the depths when a pebble falls into the water.
"Did you know that rats can laugh?" the ratman asked. He told me about a neuroscientist who had discovered that rats tickle each other during play and titter with hilarity at a pitch too high for the human ear to detect. Not only are the rats ticklish only on certain parts of their bodies, their high-frequency chirps are equivalent to human laughter, a clear sign the rats have a complex emotional life that includes joy.
Read more from the chapter titled Rat Race.
Read "A Wild Bird, a Feral Cat, and the Nature of Things," a chapter from Zooburbia.
Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz. 7pm. Free.
Author photo by Joel Moses.
