Animal Communication Stories

"The Other Giraffes" by Heron Saline (copyright 2001)

I used to work at an agency that is situated right behind the San Francisco Zoo. First Wednesday of each month is free day at the Zoo and I used to go over after work to watch and outwardly communicate with the animals, mostly through eye contact and blinking.

When I was a kid my pets and wild critters around my wooded home on the East coast had been my most important and trustworthy contacts. I have been learning about nonverbal communication with animals for 30 some years and so have become quite "fluent", so to speak, in many of the outward ways in which they communicate: eye contact being made or averted, distance, posture, breath, natural and welcome forms of touch, lots of ways of expressing intention, energy, who we are and what we are about! I had found that lots of animals enjoy interacting. This area of interest had translated into a long career working with adults with developmental disabilities, most of whom were non-speaking but used LOTS of nonverbal and body-space communication.

majestic mountain

During the early 90's I began studying various metaphysical techniques and eventually found myself intrigued with psychism. Now you have to understand that for most of my life I had been extremely skeptical about anything that I considered "woo woo". So this was a huge shift. I kept learning and growing and opening myself to new possibilities as they presented themselves, and finding more and more that was possible. One such opportunity was at the SF SPCA's Animal Fair in the Spring of 1998, where several Animal Communicators had booths, including Marta Williams. And Marta gave a short presentation on that topic. With her guidance and encouragement I knew I could easily reapply familiar telepathic techniques to projecting and receiving cognitive thought with non-human animals. It seemed that the biggest chunk was to simply accept that this is possible. I was delighted!

So, soon after, on a first Wednesday, I decided to wander over to the Zoo and give it a whirl. I felt excited. I was most keenly interested in conversing with wild animals and so that afternoon I headed down the row of rather dismal pens which held some of the big African mammals. I felt I got a read on the hippos, but frankly, they didn't seem to have much going on mentally that day as they sat in the pools not much bigger than their enormous bodies. Continuing, I tried to connect with two elephants standing in a nearly-empty pen of packed dirt: I read intense, almost bitter anger, and felt the intentionality of their standing with their backsides facing the zoo spectators! Furthermore, they did NOT wish to communicate with me. I moved on.

At the end of the row of enclosures were five adult giraffes, each one wandering slowly and randomly around their pen. I held onto the fence, facing them, went into my deeper mind, and began as I usually do, by "introducing" myself by projecting a picture of me, as they would see me from inside the pen, in this case grasping the fence rail. I continued, sensitized by my interaction with the elephants, projecting my intention to communicate with them, and that I realized their predicament being captive, and was there anything I could do for them? A full and silent moment passed before I "heard' in my mind's soundtrack a perfectly clear question: "Where are all the other giraffes?" It seemed to come from outside myself, and I gave myself a moment to be sure of what I was perceiving. It made so much sense: these are herd animals!

Still holding the fence rail with my eyes closed, I took my time and for the next 20-25 minutes of clock-time I made mental pictures showing the giraffes their own pen, then the zebras next to them, then the next pen, which they could see as well from their own. I continued picturing eastward down the row and then made pictures of above the trees, and then of rooftops as you might see from up in a tall tree. I took my time and showed details and found ways to explain the meaning of the images they might not understand. For instance, after the rooftops, I showed people, which they certainly saw enough of at the zoo, going into and out of them, like ants at an anthill. Then I sped up the process but still without rushing, zooming up and away to show the city and other towns as we traveled eastward. I showed grasslands and mountains (the Sierras) and swept onward across and over the Great Plains, occasional towns, and again to the eastern mountains, and then to the sea. I described to them the Atlantic Ocean as being like the biggest field of grass they could imagine, only covered with water! On and on we traveled over the water, feeling its vastness and eventually coming to another land mass, Africa. There we went over more grasslands and there, I said and showed, were all the other giraffes!

I then did an abbreviated reverse trip in order to reorient them and take us back to them in their pen in the SF Zoo. As we mentally "pulled into" the giraffes' enclosure, which happens to be along the far western border of the Zoo (and at most several hundred yards across Great Highway from San Francisco's Ocean Beach, with its huge crashing waves), I threw in that, "Oh, by the way, remember that 'ocean' — the biggest imaginable field, but covered with water? Well, there's another one right over there past those trees." I opened my eyes, still holding onto the zoo rail with both hands, and I brought my consciousness back into my body and external surroundings. As I did I saw all five giraffes simultaneously walking west across their pen, clearly looking into the distance. Over the treetops, I hope they could see the ocean.