Something that's not often asked, much to my surprise, is what my favorite animal is. I understand I'm not five. It is a throwaway question but I am of the Facebook generation of which countless information-seeking surveys are how we passed the time. Don't bother looking me up. I am long past using that platform. Having a favorite animal is almost a weird concept. A flavor or food is understandable. A type of weather or season, sure. I wondered when I first decided I wanted to answer this whether having a favorite or liking one more than another is against the inherent concept of conservation. I thought about it in human terms. I wouldn't say I prefer one type of race, filling in for species, over another. Then this opened up an entire psychological can of worms which ultimately gave way to me conceding to this. Just because I gravitate towards some animals over others does not mean I want to genocide or watch the rest of them die out.
I'm sure at this point some of you are saying "We just wanted to know your favorite animal. You went way off the deep end." Old habits die hard. It's not that simple for me because in trying to come up with my favorites I began to think of animals I don't gravitate to. Can you imagine Steve Irwin saying Crocodiles are cool but fire ants can burn in hell? All species have a role on this planet, whether that affects us directly or not. One is not more important than the next. Along with sharing my favorites, I am also sharing my least favorite, but none of this is based on worth.
I am already outspoken on my distaste for domesticated animals like cats and dogs so I'm not going to talk about that here.
Monkeys - We never had a Tiger poster because we didn't subscribe to Zoobooks but I am almost confident that at some point we had a few sample pages from the Monkey issue which resulted in disappointment. I don't think my older sister was interested in Monkeys either. Somehow these animals would repeatedly come into our lives. My mother bought numerous Monkey related stuffed animals for me, one of which I kept on my Drumset since I didn't have Animal from the Muppets to put in my stick holder. The big development at the Bronx Zoo had been the Congo Gorilla Forest being added. The Jacksonville Zoo event updated their African Forest exhibit since I've been down here. Everywhere I go, the monkeys will follow.
Are they too similar to humans for me? Smaller, hairier humans? Possibly. Over the years I've started to become fonder towards them. What Changed? The Lion King. I'm a huge fan of Rafiki. I'll even admit to the following. I am not an emotional person when it comes to films and the father/son relationship in The Lion King never gets to me. In the remake, when Rafiki retrieves his staff from the tree and says "Hello, old friend"...yeah, that gets me.
Elephants - Elephants are a common animal that everyone seems to like. When you go into a house, what do you see? An elephant statue with money tucked into its truck for luck and wealth. They are almost the Keanu Reeves of the Animal Kingdom if there were multiple versions of him which are occasionally murdered for his tusks.
When I attended Savannah College of Art and Design there were different groups of people I would hang out with. There was one group I didn't spend as much time with but were super welcoming which was very recreational even though I was not. Read between the lines here. One night I invited myself over when they decided to watch a very trippy movie called Cat Soup. Cat Soup is an experimental surreal film about a cat who has to travel to the land of the dead to bring back his sister's soul. There were multiple scenes involving elephants that stood out to all of us. Despite not being in on it like the rest of my friends, I went away that night with elephants on my mind and never looked back. Seeing an old classmate of mine on a trip engaging with elephants including some Calves was one of the reasons I deleted Facebook. Jealous much? Perhaps. It's worth getting rid of and disconnecting to discover who you are and for you to live your own life, not live through others.
Praying Mantis - This is an animal that skeeves me out. Insects are hard to get behind. The fact that the female Praying Mantis will eat the head of the male during intercourse creeps me out so much. Was I a male Praying Mantis in a past life? I hope not. It's dreadful to think about.
Foxes - Most people assume that Foxes are my favorite animal. I even have the old Kojima logo tattooed on one of my shoulders. Foxes were always cool to me because of Robin Hood. That was my favorite Disney movie as a kid. As an adult, I still like them but not to the point I'd consider them my ultimate favorite. After witnessing them interacting with people in various settings over the years I find them too similar to dogs.
Snakes - My wife says I can't have one because my kids will get freaked out when I feed them mice. I LOVE SNAKES. Ok, so stealing this area to mention I love reptiles. Alligators, Frogs, Lizards. Reptiles and Amphibians. Family members of one of my friends helped run the Long Island Herpetology Society and I was forcibly volunteered to help one day. It was my first major experience with Snakes and it was a wow moment for me. I'm sadly remembering that I no longer have the staff ribbon I wore at the event as an entire bag of my collections was lost throughout the years but it meant so much to me that I had kept that ribbon as a prized possession. More recently, at a local playground right before the pandemic hit, a teenage girl approached me and my son outside of the park restrooms to show us her snake. I thought it was so cool. My son pets it disinterestedly and then proceeded to talk about video games as is his want. One day he'll understand. He wants a cat right now so I have to wait for that to blow over before corrupting him with the wonders of snakes.
I also had multiple experiences with snakes in college. I'm trying to remember if one belonging to an acquaintance named Jesus was a Boa or a Python. We used it for a film shoot and I even got to hold it at length at a party. One of my roommates bought a snake as well which we had up until he went back to Romania for the summer.
So there you have it. Some animals I enjoy and others I'm not too fond of.
TL,DR: Let me hang out with your snakes but keep your Praying Mantis far far away from me.
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