Using animal communication to talk with backyard wildlife

Have you ever stopped to consider what the creatures of the wild might want to share with us? What messages might a hummingbird, a tree frog, or a crow have for you? Today, I invite you to embark with me on a journey into the heart of interspecies communication. As we navigate through fascinating conversations with wild animals, we'll discover the wisdom they have to share and how we can apply it to our own lives.

Imagine connecting with a hummingbird and hearing it urge you to seek joy and rise above life's frustrations. Or learning about persistence and the power of holding on to what you love from a tree frog. Our encounters with these incredible creatures challenge us to see beyond our limiting perspectives and help us understand our integral role in the natural world.

As we delve deeper, we'll uncover the profound wisdom of wild animals and learn how to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with them. From the teachings of crows and snakes to the insightful messages from a toad, each interaction presents a unique opportunity for learning and growth. So tune in, open your heart and mind, and prepare to redefine your relationship with the natural world. You might be surprised at what you might discover.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello, my dear ones, shannon, here with AnimalLoveLanguagescom, I am an animal intuitive and sensitive Reiki master practitioner and an animal communication teacher, mentor, guide and cheerleader. And, most importantly, today I am your friendly neighborhood hostess for the let's Talk to Animals podcast, a podcast for all species to enjoy together. We have talked about so many different topics over the last four seasons related to interspecies conversations, and this is one that is near and dear to my heart and, oddly, I haven't addressed it yet here on the podcast, and I was thinking about that this morning and I said that is just really, really odd because it makes up a huge part of my own daily life, and so I wanted to carve out a special moment here as well when I'm recording this. Anyway, we're just moving from summer into fall. I will be honest and confess that here in Houston, texas, we're in the deep, deep tropical south and, as is typical for us, when we transition into fall and we hit the fall equinox, temperatures seem to get even hotter. So we have yet to actually experience any true fall weather, and boy are we looking forward to it. However, I can already see subtle signs in the changing of the daylight hours, in the changing of the green beings all around us and in the behavior of the wild beings that we share our home space with.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Here you know animal communication as a discipline, as a daily practice. Of course it starts with our communications with ourselves. We, after all, are animals too. It's so easy to forget that, especially in movies and pop culture, where we're kind of viewed as either a superior species or be an invasive species, or see the one that just doesn't quite fit or unlike all the rest, and that couldn't be less true. The truth is is we are all more alike than different. I am a big proponent of taking off our species glasses, just kind of forgetting about species, especially when I'm having conversations with companion animals or wild animals, kind of forgetting about the surface differences that relate to kind of how our brains have evolved to function and to work and to serve us, and kind of the differences that we see to our surface, exterior, our bodies, and how they work and function and how we choose to use them.

Speaker 1: 3:05

There's a really awesome book that I talk about a lot among many awesome books and, trust me, my personal reading list is always towering and threatening to topple over, whether it's on my iPad or by my bedside table, but this is one of my enduring favorites. It's called your Inner Fish by Dr Neal Schuben, and if you have even a passing interest in evolutionary biology, you will find it fascinating how he traces back under the skin, if you will, similarities that exist between human animals and really all of life, down to organisms that have what's called a notochord, which is the precursor to our modern spinal cord. Even these most so-called primitive at least structurally speaking, of creatures share the same basic appendages, the same basic systems with the same basic functions. So we can look down deeper than what our modern day surface culture presents us with and start to seek out the similarities for ourselves. And this is so important when we're talking about saving a planet that we all depend on and making it a safe and serene space for all of us to share and enjoy and take care of together. Animal communication continues as we're starting to look within at our own conversations that we're having with ourselves, and we then start to take a look at the conversations we're having with other human animals, especially if we're involved in any kind of green or eco-friendly communities, if we're involved in any animal-centric communities, whether it is wildlife restoration and safe harbor, safe sanctuary, whether it is rescuing companion animals, whether it is keeping company with our own animal companions in our home space, or what we call our pets and I'm going to record a whole other episode on that but pet basically stands for partner and path and teacher at least that's what the pets tell me, and so there's a lot more to explore there as well, but it continues. Then, when we take a look at the conversations that are always going on around us in our wild local communities Just as you can probably look around your home space right now and you can locate any number of electronic devices that are connected in some way, whether through a Wi-Fi hotspot or tethered internet or Bluetooth or some other seemingly invisible technology that our own human brains can barely even grasp and comprehend and our electronic devices are all around us and they're having conversations.

Speaker 1: 6:15

If you've ever noticed your devices suddenly decide to update themselves and they all seem to start. It's kind of like watching dominoes tumble down. They're all. You go to one and it's updating. Go to the next one and it prompts an update. Go to the next one and it's updating, and they're all having this ongoing conversation.

Speaker 1: 6:33

And if it's possible with our electronic devices, why would we doubt that it's possible with the wild animals that we share space with. And why would we doubt that it's possible for us to join in those conversations, for us to participate, for us to maybe not take a leadership role but just join in? From a very early age we human animals are educated and then in our workplaces later on, we are trained that if we're not taking a leadership role we're kind of not relevant, and so we tend to approach our wild spaces the same way, whether it's our own backyard or a local park or even our home space, where we're kind of outlining the rules of the road and the daily schedule and all of this. It's like we're large and in charge or somehow we kind of cease to exist and we've forgotten. There's a third option, and that is just to be a part of to join in, to add our two cents to arrive humble, teachable, coachable, eager to learn and grow and not just serve but be served.

Speaker 1: 7:47

We have so much that we receive from our pets, our partners, empathic friends and teachers, our companions in our daily lives. We have so much that we receive from the wild beings that we invite to our spaces, whether it's the houseplant on our windowshell. So I have so many houseplants just in this room alone and the little window box garden that we have or maybe we live in a larger wild space and then the animals, the insects and the birds and the local species that we share our space with, and we kind of tend to forget the the whole concept of owning of, of claiming ownership, of buying and selling areas of landmass, areas of water. This is all a human construct. Long, long, long before we were even a gleam in the eye of the primordial soup, so many of our wild planet mates were already freely making use of the land that we now kind of put our stake down and we've said well, I bought it, I have the day heat, it's mine.

Speaker 1: 9:11

So much so that this summer and this is just me sharing just a little tangent for a moment, so bear with me, but this summer, when we dipped a toe into water restrictions because we had so little rainfall, it made me it just really like, made my heart burn. I just felt so frustrated with the concept that we humans could restrict access to water for our local plant life and our animals. You could say we can't water our trees, our grass, because we're saving it all for us, like somewhere out there is a human organization that has decided that the water belongs to our species and we can withhold it from other species that need it because we're using too much of it or we're not getting enough of it back from nature. And that just drove me nuts and we're not going to talk anymore about that because there's a lot to be said, but that's not the focus that I've chosen for today. So it's just frustrating.

Speaker 1: 10:24

It can be frustrating, and so part of rejoining the conversation, the conversations that are really already going on all around us, this is a huge blessing and a benefit of being part of an inner species conversation, of being a student of animal communication, of beginning to awaken to the possibilities at any level, whether you choose to dip a toe in the water or you want to dive in and go as deep and as far and to as many different locales as you can. And part of it is recognizing that our local wild animals can start to guide us through some of this soupy morality, this outdated and archaic worldview that puts us in charge and yet somehow powerless, because then there are other humans that are in charge of us. And when it stops making any sense at all and we feel like we're just blocked and we're trapped and we no longer love our species. We no longer want to be part of the human species. I spent many years wishing I could just change species, because I just didn't feel aligned with how humanity as a whole is managing our planet and I just felt powerless to do anything about it. Then, when I started learning animal communication, I was able to step out of that position of well, I'm part of the leadership, but I don't feel in charge and I don't feel like I can do anything about it. Therefore, I just kind of I just feel apathetic at some level, like hopeless, and I started just recognizing that my impact begins at this very local, very non-glamorous, this little patch of space that, for whatever reason I call home, that is deeded to me and my mom and that we do have some control over, and all the wild animals and birds and insects, reptiles and amphibians, fish, that we share this little patch of land with. I can invite them to guide me. How can I help you? I may not be able to fix all the big problems of the world, but how can I help you right now? What do you need? Because I do have a lot to offer. I have a lot that I can do.

Speaker 1: 12:56

I can't do anything about the raising of the five acres behind us that has been just desecrated and the huge apartment complex that they're building on it, or the other plot of land across the street. That was once for many, many, many decades I grew up in this neighborhood. In many, many decades that was a kind of a natural wild space where box turtles could raise their young and a creek float through it. And now it's been sold as well. Seven acres for another housing unit for my species, for humans. I can't do anything about that, but I can still make our backyard or tiny little I think it's a eighth or a sixteenth of an acre or something like that. I can still create a little haven for all of the displaced creatures right here in my backyard.

Speaker 1: 13:58

And so that's really where we're focusing today is to kind of recognize and if you have been kind of walking around and thinking to yourself, I do. I feel helpless, I feel even apathetic, I feel like I don't really I'm supposed to be the species that's in power here on this planet and top of the food chain, the apex predator, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. And yet I don't feel in charge and I don't feel empowered and I don't even understand how this, how the resources on our planet are being allocated and who actually is making those decisions. And let's just forget about that for a moment and recognize that you can do so much good by joining in the conversation right in your little corner of the world, right in your little eighth or sixteenth or thirty second of an acre, right in your little condo or apartment or high rise, wherever you are, you have the opportunity to drop your pebble in into the water and start a ripple effect. And in most cases, when we're having animal communication conversations and certainly here on, let's Talk to Animals as well we've had three seasons worth of conversations about applications for animal communication with companion animals, with our pets, and that is an awesome use for animal communication. But there are so many other applications as well and you may be listening to this.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Maybe you don't have the ability to have a companion animal in your life right now, a pet animal, maybe your animal has passed into spirit. Recently We've had so many, so, so, so many animals crossing over soul pets crossing over my own soul. Bird pearl crossed over back in January of this year and I was able to be bare witness to the incredible reincarnation story of him coming back to me as Petal, who is up under her cossa right now foraging for millet. I have seen and talked with so many pet parents who are helping their soul. Pets transition to spirit and then feeling bereft and kind of frozen in place and not really ready to now or ever maybe invite another animal into their life.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And that doesn't mean that animal communication is off limits to you. It doesn't mean that you can't be a vibrant part of the inner species conversation. There are wild beings all around you who are waiting to talk with you, eager to talk with you, eager to share what they know as teachers and eager to learn from you as students. Our non-human animal, bird and insect friends are often much more eager to learn from us, to soak in wisdom, to understand us better as well, because we are everywhere. Human animals are everywhere and it really helps them when we open up and we share more about and not just share from what we know, but share from.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I really don't know why our species does this, so let's just carve out a little alternate reality for ourselves, or we choose to do things differently, where we choose to partner, where we choose to collaborate, where we choose to chat about any changes taking place in this little space that we share together, where we co-create a different world, where we kind of forget about we do forget about who owns what and recognize that it's here for all of us equally and we consider that in every choice that we make, am I taking more than my share, more than what I truly need, and in that, am I perhaps taking away from another being I'm sharing this space with who could benefit from that extra? So I'm going to share six wonderful interactions, little conversations that I've had with wild beings that we keep daily company with here in our little tiny plot of green space, and then I'm going to guide you in how you can begin to spark conversation with one or more wild beings of any species that you may feel connected to or curious about, or simply maybe you have noticed that these wild beings are part of your world on a regular basis and you just like to open your heart to them, open your mind to them, open up to them about what it's like to be you and find out more about what it's like to be them, so hopefully you will enjoy that. I realize this format's a little bit different than what we normally do here on the podcast, but you know what? That's one of the perks of being the podcast hostess and the schedule coordinators that we get to chat about whatever drops into my heart on a given day, and, of course, I always welcome your input for ideas and topics for the podcast as well. This is our podcast, this is our inner species world, and it's something that we are co-creating together.

Speaker 1: 19:45

When I started planning for this podcast, the first thing I did is and I encourage you to do this as well as you start your own local wild conversations, I just dropped into my heart and I asked the local wild animals that I've been seeing lately and seeing repeatedly to just show up in my inner vision, and I just kind of grabbed the first three participants who it's kind of like asking the wildlife around me to raise their hands. Who wants to go first? And the first wild being I saw was my precious, precious, precious hummingbird and when I say my, I don't mean it from a sense of ownership, but the hummingbird that visits our little green space, our little shared green space, regularly. This is a green and white hummingbird with some wonderful black coloration on the edges of their plumage. I don't know whether this hummingbird is a male or female and the hummingbird is definitely a juvenile, so we may not see markings to that effect for some time.

Speaker 1: 20:57

But mom and I attended a hummingbird seminar recently to learn a little bit more about our local hummingbird species and how to attract them and tend to their needs, and right after we attended this hummingbird started to show up regularly. One of the things we learned in the workshop is that hummingbirds, like many wild animals that kind of discover an awesome space that has lots of good stuff that meets their needs, is that hummingbirds can be kind of territorial and usually a hummingbird will adopt a lawn or a yard or a green space and defend it from other hummers that come along and would like to have it for their very own. So that part of our nature as human animals we do get honestly, and this hummer has adopted our lawn and I am so excited. Like I love those adopt a highway signs. I literally want one of the signs. I want a sign that says picture of our hummingbird. It's like our lawn is adopted, like I just feel so proud that this hummingbird has found enough value in what we offer in our little green space that he or she wants to return daily and is willing to actually burn calories and exert energy and take the risk of fighting off challengers because our yard is so valuable. And that's pretty darn cool, especially because I didn't go into this knowing anything about hummingbirds, and so we really had to up our learning curve pretty quickly to attract them as they're passing through on their fall migration.

Speaker 1: 22:40

So I asked this hummingbird what is the message? What is the teaching? What is the thing you want me to know most or first about why we are crossing paths? Because I believe that we have a sole contract with every being that we cross paths with, even on a very casual level, even people that we've meted across walk or people driving in their cars beside us. Of course, sole contracts can be very superficial. They can be very deep and last a lifetime, and so I do believe there's a reason why this hummingbird has crossed my path and I have crossed theirs. So I asked what the message is. Share a little bit about the sole contract.

Speaker 1: 23:31

They always are the teacher in this particular case, at least from my perspective and this hummingbird said seek joy, be effervescent, rise, rise above it. Rise above it all. Rise above your frustrations, rise above your feelings of powerlessness, rise above the frustrations and the limitations of not knowing, and seek joy. Joy will lead you to where you need to go for the highest and best good of all. And this is so powerful to me because every morning, when I wake up, I pray a prayer that my intuitive teacher, son Yusho Ket, taught me, which is please, highest vibration, dearest ones, move me this day in the direction of my highest good and the good of all. Show me who I can help and how I can help. Show me who can help me and how they can help me. And this is my prayer Each and every morning. I've been practicing this for some years, and the hummingbird is literally saying don't let this stuff get you down, or don't even let the mental aspect of being a human animal get you down or bog you down or slow you down or weigh you down. Rise, rise, allow yourself to rise. When you see me fly by, allow yourself to become immersed in the bubbles of joy that float up in the miracle that someone so tiny and so vibrant and so powerful, you should see a hummingbird defending their little patch of space. They are their warriors. That's all I can say. I wouldn't want to challenge our hummingbird for our green space. I would be just like no dude, you can have it, totally get it. You are definitely large in charge here. So that was. It was a really cool message.

Speaker 1: 25:30

There's another being that arose after I saw the hummingbird. The hummingbird came first, and then we have this potato plant, potato vine plant, and it's this if you're not familiar, you could look it up. They have a beautiful light green leaf and they grow in a vine like like a pathos, or the common office plants or the hanging plants. I have several of them here in my workspace here. But this is a lovely light green color and grows really really well and really really easily. And we bought this big, beautiful potato plant and before we were able to actually plant it we were going to originally plant it in the front around a big oak tree that we have this little tree frog came along and adopted it.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I have had a lifelong love affair with frogs and toads and turtles and amphibians and reptiles. I just adore them. So the moment this little tree frog moved in and adopted this hanging potato plant, well, it was his potato plant in this tree frogs case. Again, I can't tell gender, but I'm getting a male feeling from this tree frog so I call him a him. This is a hanging plant, so it came with kind of one of those hooks and so I had just kind of hung it up on a hook that we had in our little walkway between the garage and the house until we could get get going and planted. And then the tree frog found it and spends literally all day, almost every day, just clinging to the side of this plant and I make sure it gets watered twice a day and I always go and I check for him and when he's not there I worry and I try really, really hard. It got pretty fried this summer when it got a little too much sunlight. I'm trying to take cuttings and repopulate it, root them indoors and then replant them in the potato plant so this tree frog would have more protection and more shade during the day and just feel more safe and secure in his home.

Speaker 1: 27:46

And he disappeared for about a week and I took it really personally. I felt like maybe I didn't do a good enough job of keeping his home safe and secure. Then I was worried maybe something had happened to him while he just reappeared two days ago and I was overcome with joy. I was so happy and I asked the tree frog for his wisdom and he said cling to what you love, claim it for your own. He said, keep coming back and keep following your dreams, persist. And I just love that image. He, he, he just spends all day clinging to the side. Just right under there's a lip on this hanging plant where the wire hanger parts hook in and it's this little tiny shelter. And all day long he just clings with his powerful foot suckers to this little lip underneath the pot, but right where the pot part starts, on this potato plant, and then at night he goes hunting. What a perfect setup. And I really take his message to heart because I'm going through a lot of growing pains here at Animal Love Languages, learning a lot of new things, just growing something new and how it can feel, touch and go at times, and I guess that that in its own way feels a little bit like being part of the greater food chain of life. I really take his advice and his wisdom to heart persist, keep coming back, keep showing up, claim your space, go for your dreams. So if you needed to hear that today, you know who to thank my precious, precious little planet, mate the Green Tree Frog.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Next, I wanted to share a message from a beautiful being who has recently come to visit us, and these guys and gals aren't typically here with us all year long, but they arrive seasonally and these are the crows. We have a flock of wild crows that appears usually in early spring We'll hear them and then now in the fall and kind of in the changing of the seasons, they show up here. So when the temperatures are a little bit more temperate, you have some really beautiful, tall, wide, mature trees still growing around us despite all the construction, and they really love it because they're bigger birds and they need a little bit more space. And they're really cool, they're really brave and smart and the sound, the call that they make, reminds me of my favorite place on Earth Cape Cod.

Speaker 1: 30:52

I was going through a really tough period of my life about a decade ago, really feeling stuck, really feeling overworked, which I was. I was running a charity I founded at the time, working three jobs to support that, and at one point I just kind of couldn't take it anymore and I said I agreed. My mom asked to join my parents on Cape Cod for a vacation and remember the first morning that I woke up there. That's a place where you can keep your windows open at night and it's quite cool in the evenings. And I would wake up in the mornings and I would hear the sound of the crows outside and it felt like a miracle sound to me. That's how it landed in my heart. It's interesting.

Speaker 1: 31:38

When I asked the crow consciousness of the crows for their message, they said shout it from the tree tops. Let everyone know that you're here, share what you have to share. Shout it from the tree tops, loud and proud. That's what they do. You know they're not trying to hide the fact that they're present. They're not trying to play small. They're not trying to fly under the radar, so to speak. My love, are you done with your foraging? She's like I'm going to come down now and chew on the microphone cables. That's one of the things you love to do, isn't it? She really loves the cable for my little cute little ball microphone here, my little blue snowball, I guess what it's called microphone. So they really are. They show up, they claim their space. They let everyone know that they're there. They shout their wisdom from the highest tree tops, and that's what we need to do when we feel called to make a difference in this world. And anyway, we don't need to put any labels on our particular offerings in this world. What we are here to offer, what we feel our heart calling us to offer, what we are uniquely positioned to give, and also what we most want to receive, we have to ask, we have to open, we have to show up, and the Croves are really good at doing that and I feel like they've entered our little green space to, in part, to share that message of encouragement with me as well. I feel very grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 33:34

I had another really cool sighting recently, actually right after one of the few rains that we had this summer. It was a very memorable experience because we only had a couple of them literally all summer long, in temperatures ranging all the way from 100 up to 110, 115. We only had a couple of really good soaks, really good rainfalls, and after the second one, which was just a couple of weeks ago, I went out as usual in the morning, because after a good rainfall is the best time to go snail hunting my little box turtle, who just turned two, loves herself a tasty escargot delicacy. So I go out in the front lawn most mornings, either after our sprinkler has run or after a rainfall, and I go snail hunting. I know exactly where to look for them and where they like to hang out, and I harvest the snails and kind of drop them all over her day play area so she can go and hunt them. And this particular morning, when I lifted up the potato vine in the front yard to go and look for snails in one of their favorite little hangouts, instead I encountered a sweet little rat snake. And we've had enough snake sightings around here.

Speaker 1: 34:54

As I mentioned, I kind of grew up in this neighborhood. I am back in my childhood home, which is its own interesting journey, and we have a bayou right behind the house, and so we've always had snakes. We've always had toads and frogs and lots of birds and just lots of wildlife here, and so I knew enough to be able to identify this snake was not poisonous, this snake is young, this snake is scared. I knew the signs, I knew what I was looking at, I knew what I was seeing. I knew to look at the eyes and look at the shape and look at the pupils. I knew all of those things.

Speaker 1: 35:32

It's been so dry that we haven't had that many snake sightings and it just felt like a real gift that this sweet little snake was hiding under the potato plant, just looking probably looking for snails too, looking for breakfast, looking for a little relief from the unrelenting heat, and we spent a little time together. I took a few photos and this felt like a feminine energy. She was very accommodating and allowing me to take a few photos of her, and then I ran inside to get some mealworms, thinking well, I'll give her some tasty treats. And when I came back out, she she, of course was gone. She had disappeared into the grasses and I asked her for her message and she said seek out the company of those who see you and who you truly are. What a beautiful message, because it would be so easy to look at this snake, who has markings very similar to the poisonous snakes in our local area as well, and it would be so easy to just get overreactive. Just think about the young children that live next door to us and think about my tortoises living in the backyard full time, and think about our dog and think about us and and just not take the time to check. I really feel strongly that this snake showed up to say this, the snake version of what Renee Brown says in her book Darian, greatly, only listen to those who are in the arena with you, fighting bravely, learning, showing themselves, being open and vulnerable, taking chances, making connections. And I thought that's what this snake did by choosing our yard and knowing that she would be seen for who she truly is, that she was safe here, there wasn't anything to worry about, she could rest here, she could hunt here, she could breathe here and rest, and so that was a really powerful message for me that I really take to heart.

Speaker 1: 37:46

I have noticed lately out in the yard lots of little holes appearing, holes in the grass, holes in the dirt, holes in the ground, and I bought a book from the Humane Society of the United States that talks about our wild neighbors and kind of some of the signs to look for what it looks like when you have, for instance, an armadillo visiting your yard, and one of the signs is lots of shallow burrows, ideally facing southward. And that is exactly what I'm seeing, and I have it on good authority from our neighbor that she and her husband have seen an armadillo hanging out in their backyard and I've seen signs in both the front yard and in our backyard of these little burrows. Of course the armadillo is digging, looking for tasty insects and grubs and also digging to find a shelter and kind of stay out of harm's way. And so when an armadillo is present, a lot of times you see these little shallow burrows and they're really cute because they're snout size so you can just imagine. If you're not sure what an armadillo looks like because maybe you don't have them in your area, you can look it up. But we have a lot of them and I love them. I just think they're the coolest. And so they're little burrows or snout size so they can literally just stick their head in and kind of root around for something tasty. And so I asked the armadillo I've only seen this armadillo once, by the way, but I asked the armadillo for a message and I'm getting a mail energy with this armadillo and the armadillo said to me seek out communities where you are free to be who you are and you're welcome to do what you do.

Speaker 1: 39:45

Armadillos are so, so harmless. They are these gentle creatures that they don't see very well and they're very, very primitive and they're really. They have a beautiful, soft energy and they're very devoted and dedicated. They love to eat their real insect foodies, if you will, and I just love them. I've always loved them, and this armadillo knows. Yeah, I mean, is it a little frustrating to have a creature digging holes near your precious fig tree? Absolutely, but that's easy enough to redirect. Just put a little fence around the little root area and a little structure and there's a whole big lawn. And of course this armadillo can dig, just not directly into the fig roots. It's so easy to share the space. We don't have to get militant about not on my lawn.

Speaker 1: 40:42

We all said that they would have no place to find food, to raise families, to be here, and so for me, after the armadillo is rooted in a particular area, I can just take some dirt and cover it up and the tasty, rich soil will probably attract new yummies, and so maybe the armadillo will go back and find something else to eat. But it just felt made me feel really, really good to realize this armadillo viewed our area, our shared area with our neighbors, as a place where he is welcome, where he can meet his needs, where he can find what he needs to survive and thrive, or maybe he can make baby armadillos with his lady love and raise them. And what a gift just brightens my world in a way that nothing on the human side of things really can when I see signs that he's visited us again. And finally, I wanted to share a message from one of my loves, my longtime loves from my childhood the toad, now my box turtle, io, who's turning two. Io has an overnight area that's very secure. It's enclosed on all sides and off the ground and she has a day play area that's actually on the bricking of our patio and she loves to hunt for insects and snails and little crevices in the bricks. So I created a structure that is open and there but also secure, and there's just enough space for our little peeper frogs and toads, when they're very young, to sneak underneath and they can also gain access to the water that I put out for her to drink and swim in and the snacks that I put out. I offer her fruits and vegetables and greens, in addition to the earthworms and the snails and the little doodle bugs and all that good stuff. So I often see them keeping company with her and I have always loved toads, so they kind of disappeared from this area for a while and now they're making a comeback.

Speaker 1: 42:58

And when I asked the toad, why, why are you coming back now? I mean it seemed kind of obvious to me from a head perspective, but from a heart perspective again, it's so important to be teachable, to be coachable, to be open, to be a student. And the toad said to me this is the collective consciousness of the toad. I say the toad in singular, but really we're talking about toads, many, many, many and in many life stages, from really big, honking toads that are wonderful with their deep bellowing calls, to very, very tiny toads that you really have to look closely to even confirm that what your eyes actually saw was a tiny little toad hopping along. They're so cute. But I asked what is the message? We're so glad to see you again. What wisdom do you bring into this space? And they said cultivate mutually beneficial and nourishing friendships for the highest no-transcript. So that's where I want to leave you with today's episode and just encourage you.

Speaker 1: 44:02

You know, interspecies, communication, animal communication yes, it's a discipline. We all have so many choices in life and we can't choose everything. I mean theoretically, I guess we could, but it tends to kind of be a balancing act between where do I feel like I can make the most impact for the highest good of all, and where do I only have time to maybe dabble or maybe make mutually beneficial connections and collaborations with someone else who has a different area of expertise. And so, of course, as an animal communicator, as an animal intuitive, as an animal communication teacher, this is my discipline, this is where I've chosen to specialize. But I recognize that we bring we all bring so many different facets of knowledge, wisdom, life experience and connections and collaborations together to the table.

Speaker 1: 44:58

And so, even if you haven't chosen animal communication as your big area of specialization or maybe your professional career, there's that there's no reason to assume you can't build beautiful friendships and have amazing Conversations across species boundaries as much as you have time for, in as much depth and with as much mutual benefit as your own imagination will permit you to have. And so, to close us out today, I just want to encourage you to sit quietly and close your eyes and ask for one of the wild beings that shares your space to just present themselves to you, exactly the way I described. That I did when I was preparing for this podcast. Just ask for one representative to start with who would like to connect with me, who would like to share a message, and just allow your mind to kind of float, take a few deep breaths to really feel your body move, to get down into your body, to feel embodied, the embodiment of your spirit. This is your physical home and it's a physicality that you share with all the other animals and birds and insects that you share space with. So just close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, invite a wild friend to present themselves to you, and if you don't get anything right away, that doesn't mean that nothing showed up. It might just mean that, based on where your intuition is most awake and most active, that that message may be waiting for you in a different form a little later on.

Speaker 1: 46:58

So stay attentive. You may find that the message comes at night, when your mind is quiet and you're in the dream state and you're more receptive to receiving a message on the intuitive level. You might find that you're driving and you see a billboard, or you see a funny bumper sticker on the back of somebody else's car, and your message is there. You might be watching a movie or listening to a streaming service, and you might hear a song that contains the message. These are all equally valid ways that your intuition can talk with you and these are all equally valid ways that our wild friends can deliver messages. So if you don't get anything, you might get something right away. But if you don't, that doesn't mean that nothing is on its way. So just stay attentive and alert and aware, and the message will come.

Speaker 1: 47:58

If your intention is to receive a message from a wild friend whose presence you value and whom you care for enough to notice them enough to reach out to them, then you will receive a message, and I would love to hear about any messages that you do receive. So please do feel free to drop a comment. If you follow me on socials, you can let me know there, or you can always pop me an email at ShannonAtAnimalLoveLanguagescom. I love hearing from you. So if you've enjoyed this podcast episode on wild messages, wild animal wisdom teachings, then please do like subscribe, share it with a friend who loves wild nature as much as you do, and I look forward to welcoming you back in two weeks for the next episode of let's Talk to Animals. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.