Animal Psychics:
are they supposed to be real?

I am always up for good satire, irony, paradox, a joke or what have you, but the other night, as I was scanning the TV channels, I came across a psychic show for animals. I had heard of psychologists for animals, which I also find strange, but I had never heard of a psychic for animals.

Well, I watched the show for a while, trying to determine whether this was a comedy or some satire that was being perpetrated against us intricately. And as I watched, I saw no signs of comedy or intentional satire or metaphor.

The animal psychic was asked by a zoo keeper to come to Florida--strange things happen in Florida, ala George Bush president--to determine what was wrong with an alligator who was not eating. Sounds like he needed psychological therapy to me.

The animal psychic went down to the zoo where the big alligator lived and communicated with it, at a discret distance from the animal, while standing much closer to the trainer/zoo keeper. She told the trainer what the alligator was saying. The alligator said to the zoo keeper to give back a certain type of meat he loved, which had been taken from him, and the alligator would train like he used to.

The alligator was quite talkative, but only the psychic could hear him. He told the trainer, through the psychic, of course, that he liked the particular meat and he was protesting against the trainer for taking that meat away from him, and that it should not have being taken, and that the new food he was being fed was not good. I had never seen such a talkative alligator, and I am from Louisiana; so I have known a few gators in my time!

While watching, I had been standing, but by the time the animal psychic had completed translating/communicating the unspoken words of the alligator, I was sitting. And not being able to stand it any longer, I started to call about by pet ladybug, but I remembered what Ms. Cleo did to her callers and put the phone down. And I realized that people in America will do anything to get a dollar--from lying preachers who will violate their oaths to God, to defrauding CEO's, who will lie about assets and liability statements, to psychic theives who bill your phone number for billions of dollars, to animal psychics; anything goes to get money in America. I'm just going to have to guess about what my pet ladybug is saying to me.

But to tell you the truth, I really could not decipher whether the animal psychic show was supposed to be real or some type of satire. As a rule, I simply imagined people could not be so silly. But maybe I am being silly about what people will believe and pay for. []
Frank A. Jones