Dead Animals
A heartfelt reflexion on my love for dead and decaying creatures
Ever since I was little I loved animals almost unconditionally.
They were apart of my drawings, written stories and even play pretend we used to play during recess in primary school. I was one of those kids that had obsessive phases and mine were about very random animals. My first animal obsession was, like many other little girls, horses. This one didn’t last very long because I soon discovered cheetahs. They were cute, gigantic cats that happened to be the fastest animal on land. As a primary school child, I researched a lot about this fantastic animal and made PowerPoints to myself filled with information about them as if I needed to present them in class. I created a whole lore with character around this animal and even made some handmade books with my best friend at the time. Everyone got along with this story and we all played together, something I created out of admiration. As primary years ended, this obsession started to fade as well and I decided I was a big girl now, and I needed to start liking things for my own age.
Time went by and I was relatively good at pretending I was normal. I would dress like them, act like them, talk like them and post on the internet like them. I was trying to be the perfect girl from a small Christian town for my mother and fellow girlfriends. Eventually I failed miserably and just gave up. Even if I tried, all my friends considered me the weirdo of the group and my mom would always ask me why couldn’t I be like the other girls. That took a toll on me and it was the hardest thing to accept it and embrace it, so I disappeared. No one would know about me anymore and I would just start over.
When I went to university, I knew I wanted to study arts. I loved cinema and I made sure to go to an art driven university so I wouldn’t go crazy. It was there that I finally was able to open my horizons and just be my authentic self. In that school I was the normal one and that was a breath of fresh air. Now that I was relaxed, I started to notice details I never thought about before because I was too busy trying to mimic other people.
The city I was living in to study was very green and had a lot of wildlife you can’t see that often in the rest of the country. It was there I saw squirrels in Portugal for the very first time. I didn’t even know they existed here. Another thing I started seeing more was dead animals laying peacefully or grotesquely on the ground, while everyone was going about their day without paying them any attention. Without thinking too much, I started taking pictures of those animals every time I encountered one, always taking my time to take the perfect picture so I could look at it later. It sounds a little bizarre, I’ll be honest and I was a bit ashamed to admit it. Over time I realised nobody cared, literally.
One time a friend of mine asked me very genuinely why did I like dead animals so much. I didn’t really know how to answer him, I just like them. I like to look at them and think about them. They were alive once, and now they’re not and no one cares. Most people even feel disgusted and that really makes me sad. More than that, I feel a deep empathy with them, I know what it’s like to be disliked or seen as weird. How could people NOT like them at all? They are just beings, not living beings anymore but beings nonetheless. I think that people just fear death and see that as a negative thing.
I wonder what it’s like to be them, staying still in total darkness and nothingness forever. I feel curious, that’s all. All I want is to honour them for going back to their nature and becoming one with the soil, fertilising the new life that is coming next. It’s the beautiful cycle of life and death. You come from Nature to go back to It when your time is due.
When I claim to like dead animals, I don’t want to say that I like them because they’re dead. I like them and pay them attention because they deserve that honour, just like everybody else. They will decay and slowly disappear from this world and no one will remember them. But I remember every innocent and vulnerable dead animal that I encountered until today, and I will remember as long as I can.
That is such an interesting topic. Also - the way you wrote it. Beautiful 🦆🐦⬛☠️🦔🐁
This is so beautifully written.
And I related sm to the "trying to be normal" paragraph😭.