How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery

Why did I pick up The Soul of an Octopus? I must have read about it somewhere. It’s a wonderful, deeply affecting book, and it introduced me to Sy Montgomery, so lately I’ve been reading her book How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals. 

She was a weird kid.

“An only child, I never yearned for siblings. I didn’t need other kids around. Most children were loud and wiggly. They wouldn’t stay still long enough to watch a bumblebee. They ran and scattered the pigeons strutting on the sidewalk.

With rare exceptions, adult humans were not particularly memorable either. I would stare blankly at an adult I had seen many times, unable to place them, unless one of my parents could remind me of their pet.” (Ch.1) 

Sy Montgomery has the gift to understand animals, to communicate with them, to feel a closeness to them. I don’t. Apart from a turtle my grandma got when I was a kid, which didn’t live that long, I’ve never really had a pet because my family have always lived in apartments and we couldn’t have pets. My boyfriend and I don’t have pets now either, though his grandparents and my stepfather have cats and I play with them when I visit. But that’s all, so I do envy Sy Montgomery’s gift for understanding animals and I love the way she writes about them—with a sense of wonder and an infectious enthusiasm and lots of love. She sees each animal as an individual, with a personality, with likes and dislikes, with a soul. 

For example, look at this passage about emus: 

“I could easily tell them apart. One had a long scar on his right leg. I named him Knackered Leg. (Knackered is Australian slang I’d learned from a zookeeper. It means “messed up” and is more impolite than I then realized.) His injury might have been the reason he sat down most often of the three. Black Head seemed to be the most forward emu of the group, and took the lead most often. It was surely he who approached us straight on during my second meeting with them. Bald Throat had a whitish patch on his throat where the black feathers were sparse. He seemed skittish. When the wind would blow or a car would approach, he’d be the first to run.

[…] I knew, though, that they were not quite adult, because they lacked the turquoise neck patches that adorn the mature birds. And they were surely siblings, having left their father’s care (the male incubates the greenish-black eggs and takes care of the up to twenty chicks who hatch) only weeks or months earlier. Like me, they were just starting to explore their world.

What do they do all day? I wondered.” (Ch.2) 

She makes me curious too: what do they do all day? 

Emus are strange, fascinating birds. I’ve heard that Luis Bunuel liked emus, which is why he put them in The Phantom of Liberty. I didn’t know till I read this book that emus had 2 different sitting positions.  

Now look at this passage, about the emus: 

“They also had a sense of humor. One day I watched them approach the ranger’s dog, tied on a chain outside his house. The dog barked hysterically, but bold Black Head, head and shoulders raised high, continued approaching the straining animal head-on. Once Black Head was within twenty feet, he raised his wing stumps forward, hurled his neck upward, and leapt into the air with both feet kicking, repeating the behavior for perhaps forty seconds. Soon the other two joined him, and the dog went absolutely wild. The emus then raced off across the dog’s line of vision for about three hundred yards, before sitting down abruptly to preen—as if to congratulate themselves on the success of their prank.” (ibid.) 

Is that not fascinating? 

Sy Montgomery and her husband adopted a baby pig, called Christopher Hogwood (named after the conductor). This passage is about the pig and their little neighbours Kate and Jane, who were 10 and 7 respectively: 

“Kate and Jane also instituted Pig Spa. One spring day, Kate decided that the long ringlet of hair at the tip of Christopher’s tail needed to be combed. Then, of course, it needed to be braided. Inevitably for two preteen girls whose house was littered with hair scrunchies and smelled like bubble bath, the effort expanded to an entire beauty regimen for our pig.

We fetched warm buckets of soapy water from the kitchen, and more warm water for the rinse. We added products created for horses to apply to his hooves to make them shine. Grunting his contentment as he lay in his pool of soapy water, Christopher made clear he adored his spa—unless the water was chilly. Then he’d scream like he was being butchered—and we’d race back to the kitchen to fetch a more comfortable bath. He forgave us the instant the warm water touched his skin.” (Ch.3) 

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to an animal that has changed her life and what lessons they have taught her. Chapter 3 is particularly interesting because, while writing about the pig, Sy Montgomery also writes about her parents and the differences that broke their relationship. The differences between her and her pig do not matter—they love each other.  

This is the concluding passage in the chapter: 

“Chris loved his food. He loved the feel of the warm, soapy water of Pig Spa, the caress of little hands on the soft skin behind his ears. He loved company. No matter who you were—a child or an adult, sick or well, bold or shy, or whether you held out a watermelon rind or a chocolate donut or an empty hand to rub behind his ear—Christopher welcomed you with grunts of good cheer. No wonder everyone adored him.

Studying at the cloven feet of this porcine Buddha every day, I could not help but learn from a master how to revel in and savor this world’s abundance: the glow of warm sun on skin, the joy of playing with children. Also, his big heart, and huge body, made my sorrows seem smaller. After a lifetime of moving, Christopher Hogwood helped give me a home. And after my parents had disowned me, out of an assortment of unrelated, unmarried people and animals of many different species, Christopher helped create for me a real family—a family made not from genes, not from blood, but from love.” (ibid.) 

This is a delightful, heartwarming book. She writes well, and she can change the way you think. About a decade before How to be a Good Creature, she wrote a book about her pig, called The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood. 

In the same chapter about Chris, Sy Montgomery also writes about their dog Tess, a border collie who was abandoned several times and previously had an accident that took her nearly a year to recover from multiple surgeries.

“She was only two years old when we took her home from Evelyn’s, but Tess had already seen a lifetime of pain, loss, and rejection.” (ibid.) 

This passage is heartbreaking: 

“…except for when we were playing her favorite sports (which worked out to be about once an hour), Tess was as wary of people as Chris was outgoing. She didn’t pee, poop, or eat without our specifically asking her to do so. She consented to petting, but seemed confused about the point. She didn’t bark for weeks, as if she were afraid to use her voice in the house. The first time we invited her up on our bed she looked at us in shocked disbelief. When we patted the covers, obediently she jumped up, but leapt back down again a second later, as if this couldn’t possibly be what we wanted.

Tess seemed to be guarding her emotions. But we knew we could change that.” (ibid.) 

And they did. 

Later in chapter 6, she writes again about Tess—in more detail. This is a deeply moving chapter with some great passages but I won’t put them here—you should read the book yourself. It is a great chapter. She makes me love a dog I have never known. She makes me envy her relationship with Tess. 

In How to be a Good Creature, Sy Montgomery alternates between her pets and the wild animals she has met. In chapter 7, she writes about tree kangaroos, echidnas, pademelons… Then in chapter 8, she writes about another pet dog: Sally, another black and white border collie that she believes Tess sent to her in a dream.  

“Despite being the same breed, Sally and Tess were almost complete opposites. Tess was a graceful athlete. Sally knocked things over. Tess loved her Frisbee and tennis ball but disdained other toys. Sally, as it turned out, became crazy for toys—except for the Frisbee, which she would catch only grudgingly to please Howard…” (Ch.8) 

Different from The Soul of an Octopus, How to be a Good Creature is a lot more personal. When she writes about wild animals, including those in capture like the octopuses, there is a sense of wonder and a sense of exploration as she interacts with an animal with which humans are not very familiar, especially animals that lack facial expressions or have expressions that we can’t read. Chapter 4 for example is about her transformative encounter with a pinktoe tarantula in a rainforest—transformative because the experience opens her up to the world of spiders that she has never known before, because it forever changes her perception of the small spiders she sees at home. 

Her writings about the pets are different—she feeds them, plays with them, loves them, and sees them as family. 

“I felt whole again. Sally made me unspeakably happy. I loved the softness of her fur, the cornmeal-like scent of her paws, the rolling cadence of her gait, the gusto with which she ate (even the stick of butter softening for the dinner table and the bowl of cereal abandoned for a moment to take a phone call)…” (ibid.) 

The three of them (her, her husband Howard, and Sally) sleep together in the same bed. 

“… And if Howard got up at night, Sally would immediately and deliberately rearrange herself to take up his sleeping lane, with her head on his pillow. When he got back, she’d give him a puffy smile. She thought this was a hilarious joke. And so did we.” (ibid.) 

This too is a great chapter, and Sally sounds like an adorable dog. 

Overall, How to Be a Good Creature is a wonderful little book, a good book to read in these depressing times. What are you waiting for?