The Nightshirt Sightings, Portents, Forebodings, Suspicions

UFOs and Animals

Mac Tonnies, a UFO lover and a cat lover, saw a connection between how UFOs behave and how we behave around our animals. He noted that UFOs behave an awful lot like laser pointers, and their effect on us is similar to our toys’ effect on our pets.

I couldn’t help thinking of this last winter when a video from Norway (embedded below) briefly went viral—a POV of a quadcopter drone encountering and descending on a moose, accompanied by the vocal delight of the drone operator and his friends. I don’t understand Norwegian, but their surprise and joy is clear from their laughter, and the moose shows no fear, and even approaches the drone in curiosity. It is indeed somewhat magical, a strange new way of achieving “communion” with a fellow creature.

I’m a great fan of trailcam photography, both for cryptozoological and more mundane purposes (the picture above is of bobcat kittens in my mom’s yard in Colorado), but drones open up whole new possibilities for animal watching and interaction. The moose video made me want to get a quadcopter myself, so I could (I imagined) explore the neighborhood and visit animals with it—a raccoon up in a tree, a deer and her fawn, a flock of geese, even a lonely dog in a backyard. I imagined how fun it would be to be, in effect, a UFO in the lives of animals—to descend into the life of a creature, be able to watch it up close, and interact with it—not scarily (certainly not cruelly) but maybe teasingly, playfully.

Play is learning (among other things). When I play with my animals, I am learning about them, always finding some new nuance in their personalities, their selves. I wonder if it would be any different if I was a UFO and Earth was my beat?

If, as I’ve speculated, many UFOs are knowledge-gathering probes or even automated science platforms, then I wonder what percentage of their activity on Earth is really centered on us humans? Our animal friends large and small may have many more UFO experiences and close encounters (and I’m not merely referring to the troubling question of animal mutilations) than we do.

Animals in my dream life are bizarre, beautiful, and inspiring. I suspect that if I were given the opportunity to visit other planets or other dimensions or other times, I would be as fascinated by the alien fauna as I would be by the local “intelligent civilizations”—maybe even more so.

___

About

I am a science writer and armchair Fortean based in Washington, DC. Write to me at eric.wargo [at] gmail.com.

Your email is never shared.
Required fields are marked *