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Conversation Lesson

Dan: Okay Aaron, what are we talking about today?

Aaron: I think we’re talking about animals.

Dan: Life and death.

Aaron: Life and death, animals and altruism.

Dan: Right. Your hamsters once saved your life.

Aaron: My hamsters.

Dan: Right?

Aaron: I’ve never had hamsters, Dan. I’ve never had hamsters.

Dan: They’re pretty much the same thing.

Aaron: I’ve had gerbils and I’ve had guinea pigs and I’ve had mice, but I’ve never had hamsters.

Dan: They’re all rodents.

Aaron: They’re all rodents. That is true. Yeah, but I don’t think they’ve saved my life though.

Dan: Really?

Aaron: Yeah, I don’t think so.

Dan: You weren’t ever in a really dark place and that little hamster …

Aaron: That little gerbil came up and …

Dan: Looked up to you and said …

Aaron: No, that never happened to me.

Dan: Put his little dirty paw.

Aaron: Saved me from the abyss, the little gerbil, yeah. No, it’s never happened.

Never happened. How about you? Have you ever been helped out by an animal?

Dan: Well, you saved my life once.

Aaron: That’s true. That’s true, I did. Actually twice I’ve saved your life. Twice, yeah.

Dan: Really? What was the first time?

Aaron: Well, the first time was just after we had met, you know?

Dan: Right.

Aaron: I pulled you out of a deep dark space.

Dan: I remember that.

Aaron: Just out of my kindness.

Dan: Yeah, and what was the second time?

Aaron: The second time was when you were drowning in the Kamogawa River. I took pity on you and saved you.

Dan: That I don’t remember.

Aaron: Well, it happened.

Dan: No, I’ve never been saved by an animal.

Aaron: No?

Dan: But I have been harassed by animals.

Aaron: Oh, I’ve been attacked by animals.

Dan: What kind of animals have you been attacked by?

Aaron: I’ve been attacked by monkeys.

Dan: Uh huh.

Aaron: Yeah, I’ve been attacked by monkeys.

Dan: What did you do to deserve that?

Aaron: Nothing. Oh actually, maybe I did something. I was in their space in the mountains alone and they happened to come down the mountain, a big troop of them, about 60 or 70 of them.

Dan: Sixty or 70?

Aaron: Yeah, they were huge numbers. This was on the mountain right on the east side of town here. I was alone and it was in the morning and they came right through. The males, the big males did not want me there and so they …

Dan: What did you do?

Aaron: Well, I initially was quite mesmerized by this big troop of monkeys and I stood still, but then some of the bigger males started to approach me and I tried to walk by them very carefully and trying not to make eye contact.

Dan: How big were the big one?

Aaron: They were big. They were big. They were big monkeys. They were Macaques.

Dan: Like up to your chest? Could they stand up and get up to your chest?

Aaron: I suppose if they stood all the way up they would be up to my chest or neck. Not quite two meters, but a meter and a half maybe. But they were thick.

They were big. Yeah, and so I walked right by one of them and he kind of looked at me in the corner of his eye and then he turned and started chasing me. And then three of them started chasing me and one jumped out of the trees.

Dan: You ran.

Aaron: I ran as fast as I could and they were screaming at me.

Dan: Were you faster than them?

Aaron: I don’t think they intended to do me any harm even though at the time I thought they were going to do me harm, but looking back on it I think they just wanted me out of that space because they had babies. They had young mothers and children. There was this human probably perceived as a threat and they did the right thing. They got me out of there and they didn’t have to fight and I didn’t have to fight. I just was very scared.

Dan: Oh, but you were mesmerized at first.

Aaron: Well because I was hiking alone in the mountains and it was very beautiful and suddenly …

Dan: The call of the wild.

Aaron: … out of nowhere …

Dan: You thought I can join.

Aaron: … appeared dozens upon dozens of wild animals, you know? Monkeys. It was fascinating.

Dan: Did you think about just ripping off your clothes and running away with them?

Aaron: No Dan, I didn’t. I did not think about that. Maybe I should have had you with me. Maybe you could of …

Dan: The call of the wild.

Aaron: The call of the wild, that’s right. Yeah. But yeah, I was attacked by monkeys. I’ve been stung by some bees. I’ve been bitten by a few snakes, nothing poisonous. I’ve been bitten by a few dogs, scratched by a few cats, but nothing terrible, how about you? Have you ever been attacked by an animal?

Dan: I’ve had stuff stolen from me by monkeys.

Aaron: By monkeys, yeah? Me too actually. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I’ve had camera cases. I had a drink slam dunked out of my hand by the Michael Jordan of monkeys. I was really thirsty. I had just climbed up a mountain.

Aaron: Oh, and he took it, huh?

Dan: Just bought this delicious drink and then this gang of monkeys start running by me and one just jumps.

Aaron: Grabbed it, yeah.

Dan: Snatches it right out of my hands.

Aaron: Wow. He ganked that.

Dan: But the monkeys in the story, they were looking out for Maykool. May I say that he has quite a cool name, Maykool.

Aaron: Maykool. Yeah.

Dan: Is that a real name?

Aaron: It’s pretty cool.

Dan: I wonder if that’s a common name in Chile.

Aaron: I have no idea, but he ran into the forest. He got lost. He couldn’t find his way out and he probably would have died of hunger, of thirst.

Dan: And thirst, probably thirst.

Aaron: Thirst before hunger. These monkeys were dropping fruit from the trees to keep him going.

Dan: And they were leading him to shelter he felt.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: Or maybe they were just going to shelter themselves and he was like, “Let me hang out, guys.”

Aaron: Following them. Or maybe they were just throwing the fruits that they didn’t want. They were half rotten or these are no good and they throw them on the ground. He thought that they were …

Dan: Maybe they were trying to get rid of them. No, he claims that they were looking out for him.

Aaron: That could very well have been.

Dan: He was kind of out of his head. He was, yeah. I think he had some kind of …

Aaron: Right, but there are …

Dan: … breakdown.

Aaron: I think we’ve all heard of stories of monkeys helping children or taking care of children.

Dan: We have?

Aaron: I think we have. You haven’t heard of that? I mean isn’t that what the Jungle Book is all about?

Dan: No. I think this is the first one I’ve ever heard of.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: No, there’s got to be others, man. Like children that have been discovered living with monkeys for …

Dan: That’s true. There probably have been.

Aaron: Chimpanzees or baboons or something.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: I’m sure there are stories out there of that. Keeping them alive for several months or several years. Then they get reunited with human society. I’m sure we may have even covered a story like that …

Dan: Yeah, I think we did.

Aaron: … at some point. Yeah.

Dan: I think we did.

Aaron: Yeah, yeah. But yeah.

Dan: I once saw this documentary that had these monkeys that had dogs for pets.

Aaron: The monkeys had dogs for pets.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: That’s interesting. Did they ride them?

Dan: No.

Aaron: They didn’t ride the dogs.

Dan: They didn’t ride them but they stole them. I think they were stealing them as puppies and then keeping them.

Aaron: They’re like dog rustlers.

Dan: Right. But anyways, aside from the fact that they were stealing these babies, they were taking care of them almost like a human would take care of a dog.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: That’s interesting. I guess the dogs probably like that. That’s probably okay.

Dan: I don’t know.

Aaron: I don’t know, if they’re getting taken care of. You know? Isn’t that the dog’s shtick in a way? Kind of making friends with someone who can take care of them and feed them? They’re loyal, they’re very loyal towards their owner, their master.

If someone is taking care of you and feeding you, that’s kind of how they survived through the millennia, by making themselves …

Dan: Ingratiating themselves.

Aaron: Yeah, ingratiating themselves, making themselves maybe useful like as a guard or …

Dan: Yeah, they’re helping, they’re giving as much as they’re getting.

Aaron: That’s right. That’s right, yeah.

Dan: Anyhow, yeah. Maykool, that was a pretty wild story. Then there was the story of Kevin Hines.

Aaron: Uh huh. This is the one that jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge?

Dan: Right, right. I was reading that over the past 60 years or so, 2,000 people, it’s a very common place people go …

Aaron: Oh yeah. It’s a very common place …

Dan: … to commit suicide.

Aaron: … to commit suicide. Yeah.

Dan: Two thousand people have jumped from there in the last 60 years.

Aaron: What’s the death rate? It’s pretty high, right?

Dan: It’s 99%.

Aaron: Oh, that many.

Dan: So he’s like one of 20 people.

Aaron: Who have ever survived.

Dan: Right, and there’s been more than 2,000.

Aaron: Wow.

Dan: So it’s less than 1% survive.

Aaron: Wow.

Dan: Yeah, apparently it’s the height of a 25 story building.

Aaron: Uh huh and so when you hit the water it’s pretty brutal, yeah.

Dan: The force of the impact, even though it’s water …

Aaron: Breaks your neck or breaks your back or something. Yeah.

Dan: I think he might have been the only … You see this guy now, he’s totally mobile. He looks like this, yeah.

Aaron: He looks like a normal.

Dan: Really virile, strong, young guy. I think in high school he was a football player. He talks about in the story we talk about that point where he’s on the bus and he’s riding home and he’s riding to the bridge to kill himself and he’s crying openly in the bus and he says to himself, if one person asks me, “Are you okay,” I won’t do it.

Aaron: I won’t do it, right.

Dan: That will show me that somebody cares. But you look at this guy, he’s really, he’s like a big muscular guy. I can see being like, if I saw that guy being a little intimidated. Like that’s a big dude.

Aaron: And he’s like emotionally upset. I wouldn’t want to mess with him, right?

Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. But yeah, he says that … So now he’s a mental health advocate and he travels the world giving talks …

Aaron: How about that?

Dan: … about people who are suicidal.

Aaron: That’s cool.

Dan: Really urging people to if you ever see somebody like him, to reach out and be that person. He also tries to reach out to people himself who are suffering from bipolar or mania or different kinds of mental issues and trying to give them hope that it’s not always going to be that way.

He says he still suffers sometimes from paranoid thoughts or suicidal thoughts, but he thinks about all of the, he realizes after surviving how many people he affected that are still in pain with the thought that he was going to kill himself and still worry to this day even though it’s been 10 or 15 years that any moment they could get a call and find out that he’s killed himself. So I don’t know how he comes up with this statistic, but he says something like for every person who commits suicide it sends out ripples throughout their family and friends and ends up affecting something like 150 people.

Aaron: Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. That can really emotionally affect people.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Yeah, cause them depression or regret or something like that. But yeah, but both of these stories just sort of touch upon the altruistic nature of animals and their level of awareness that sometimes we just take for granted that because they’re animals and because they don’t live in the way that we live and don’t have the sensibilities necessarily, especially the intellect that we have, that they’re somehow wild or dumb or …

But the fact that a sea lion in the water can see that this human is struggling, it does not help that sea lion in any way to help the human. It’s purely altruistic and see that this human’s going to die, this human is in suffering, this other being, this other creature is suffering. I’m going to help that creature. I just find that really inspiring in a way. It’s comforting that animals are really aware in many ways of what’s going on.

Dan: Yeah. Apparently the sea lion stayed with him until the Coast Guard boat came. As soon as the boat came …

Aaron: Yeah. I’ve read so many stories or heard so many stories in my life of other sea creatures like dolphins or whales. Actually there was a recent one of a group of, oh, I guess it was a lifeguard and maybe his family members that were swimming in the water in the ocean and suddenly they were just surrounded by these dolphins that were really active and really close to them, almost bumping into them.

They didn’t understand why these dolphins were acting so strange and it turns out they saw this gigantic Great White shark circling them. The dolphins were fending them off, you know? Protecting them.

Dan: Yeah, I think there’s been a few stories of protective rings by dolphins against sharks, sharks attacking the humans.

Aaron: Yeah. I also read another one recently of a young boy, maybe five or six years-old, very young, was camping with his parents way out in the middle of nowhere, and his parents had some kind of raft or boat and they went out on the water and left him on the shore to do some fishing. Somehow that boat capsized on the river they were on and they drowned.

He actually watched his parents drowning. He panicked. He didn’t know what to do and so he decided he was going to run to try and find help.

Dan: How old was he again?

Aaron: He was like, he was a young boy. I don’t know how old he was. He was a young boy. He wasn’t very old. Of course it soon became night, it soon became dark and it was freezing cold. He was shivering on the ground and he felt like this something furry and warm get up next to him. He fell asleep and when he woke up in the morning he was basically covered by three beavers …

Dan: Really?

Aaron: … that kept him warm through the night and saved his life because it got below zero, the temperature. He was covered. His body was covered by three beavers.

Dan: Wow.

Aaron: Yeah. It’s one thing to think of a dolphin because we know dolphins are very smart animals or dogs or monkeys. Monkeys are kind of like us in a lot of ways.

Dan: Or a dog because it’s your pet, you know?

Aaron: It’s your pet and we’re …

Dan: They have a relationship.

Aaron: We’re familiar with them, but beavers? Who would think that three beavers would take it upon themselves to save this young child and knowing that by getting close to them it would keep that child warm enough to survive through the night? I thought that was just amazing.

Dan: Where did that happen?

Aaron: I read that online. Is it true? Maybe it’s not, but if it is, that’s pretty amazing.

Dan: Yeah. Where did that happen?

Aaron: That was in Canada. That was in Canada maybe I don’t know, 10 years ago it happened.

Dan: Yeah. We’ve covered stories if dogs who have saved their owners, but to think of a wild animal, usually exactly, we associate that with wild animals with just thinking about survival, their own survival.

Aaron: Yeah. Or we read lots of stories about wild animals just completely preying upon human beings and ripping them to shreds, you know what I mean?

Dan: Right.

Aaron: It could totally go the opposite way. I guess maybe animals are like humans, there are some bad ones and some good ones.

Dan: But yeah, that’s mind blowing to think of beavers feeling connection with a lost boy.

Aaron: Yeah, there’s a lot of stories out there of animals helping out humans in need. Of course, likewise humans help out animals in need, but as we know, humans do lots of terrible things as well to not only animals but their brothers and sisters.

Dan: Well you know, we should post a video of this guy, Kevin Hines, talking about his experiences. He’s really a good speaker and really touching talking about reaching out, reaching out to people in need. I think he’s got a really powerful message. We should post that.

Aaron: I wonder if he does any things for sea lion conservation or helping the sea lions. I mean because I’m trying to imagine if that were me and the sea lion saved my life I would want to get involved in helping sea lions in my life, because the sea lion did something great for me. Is there any way I can give back to their community? Because they have issues too in San Francisco Bay Area. There’s problems with sea lions. Some of them get abandoned, some of them get injured. They get hit by boats. There’s issues there.

Dan: Yeah, I think he’s more focused on suicide …

Aaron: On the humans, yeah, yeah.

Dan: … prevention.

Aaron: That makes sense.

Dan: But I remember, I was just a week ago I was driving my car and I see this young college girl, who looks college age, and she’s sitting on the curb just like crying with her head between her knees. There are all these people walking by.

I’m in my car at a light and it’s a one lane road. I’m thinking is she, did she get hurt or something? There’s just a mass of people going by just walking right by her.

I think they just kind of felt that maybe it wasn’t their business and they shouldn’t intrude or maybe embarrass this person or disturb this person. Yeah, this guy Kevin, he talks about how it’s everybody’s business when there’s somebody in need and there’s somebody suffering and that every day there are thousands of people who get in such a dark space that they kill themselves and that we should always be thinking of that as our business even if we don’t know that person.

Aaron: Right. That’s interesting. It’s certainly a problem in Japan. Of course it’s a problem everywhere, but especially Japan. They have the highest suicide rate in the world I believe, if not one of the highest.

Dan: Yeah, I think it’s up there. All right my friend.

Aaron: Alrighty.

Dan: Well, until next time.

Aaron: Okay. Well, I hope you treat those animals nice.

Dan: Alrighty.

Aaron: Alrighty.