Beyond Small Talk: Lessons in Connection from the Animal World and a Different Frequency – On Autism, Animals, and Authentic Connection

Part of my personal Autistic experience, which many Autistic and other Neurodivergent people I know often relate to, is having a deep connection to animals.

While not every Autistic or Neurodivergent person may share this particular experience (and some of us may even find animals to be unpredictable, anxiety-inducing, or inevitable creators of sensory overload), for me, especially growing up, animals were almost always ‘easier’ for me to make friends with than people (for a multitude of reasons).

Our individual experiences, including what we’re exposed to growing up, can have a significant impact on wether we bond with animals (or see them as foreign).

I was raised around animals and taught that they are sentient, wise, and capable of understanding and building relationships with us (if we work to build trust with them).

My mom taught me, when I was very young, to respect plants in this same way, but many people are taught that animals and plants “are to be used by humans for our needs” without taking on any duty of care for them or the world around us.

If people are raised to think animals are simply food, or objects for people’s amusement (instead of fiends or family members), they may not understand what it’s like to see an animal and not think of them as a “lesser-being that was put here to serve humans”, and instead as an equal (who it is my duty to care for and be kind to).

Because of this core belief (that animals are our equals, our friends and family, and that it is our duty to love and care for all of them), my number one desire, from a very young age, was to understand and be understood by the non-human creatures around me, because I could see the wisdom in them and longed to know what they knew.

When the church told me “animals had no souls and don’t go to heaven,” I instantly knew I wanted nothing to do with the church or their version of heaven (because any place without animals, to me, resembles hell more than heaven).

Family Traditions

This past fall, when sitting on the porch with my grandmother, admiring her friend (a Texas spiny lizard that likes to sit around with her on the front patio in the mornings), I was reminded of one trip to visit her parents in South Texas when I was much younger, when I saw my first horny toad.

According to my grandmother, horned toads used to be everywhere in Texas, but we don’t really see them around these days. Even back then (over 30 years ago), seeing one was a rare treat.

As my grandmother told tales of her father, the sweet and gentle man who loved lizards and small creatures, I am reminded of his smile.

Being the first grandchild, born to a young mother, I had the extreme privilege of meeting four of my great-grandparents and one great-great-grandparent, and I even got to live with my grandparents (all on my mother’s side) during some of my most formative years, taking in many lessons from them in that time.

Years later, sitting on the porch with my grandmother, watching her talk to her little lizard friend, who looks at my grandmother, head cocked to the side as if listening to every word she has to say, I remember how I had been instructed by her father to “look” and “don’t touch”, when we’d found the horned toad in the back yard, and how my great-grandfather had stressed the importance of “not scaring or bothering” small creatures, as my grandmother repeated the same lesson more than 30 years later, talking about her own reptile friend.

This lizard wasn’t my grandmother’s first animal friend.

Another animal friend my grandmother had when I was growing up, that I remember well, was a rather large and hairy wolf spider, named “Wolfie”, who used to chase the vacuum cleaner when my grandmother would clean the living room.

I’m sure my grandmother had many animal friends before my time even began, but I remember Wolfie, because I lived with that spider.

Wolfie would bravely and boldly charge out from the corner of the room, where he lived under one of my grandmother’s end tables, lunging and pouncing at the vacuum (probably because he didn’t like the vibrations coming from the machine), and would go back into hiding when my grandmother turned the machine off.

While some people may have struggled to live or sleep knowing a very large (2-3 inch wide, depending on if stretched itself out) wolf spider is sharing their space and roaming their home at night, but my grandmother let me know that Wolfie had an important job to do, in keeping other bugs (like roaches) from moving into the house, and (like most critters) won’t bother us if we don’t bother him (and obviously the vacuums bothered him).

Occasionally, we’d see Wolfie roaming the house, but for the most part, the spider stayed out of sight, unless called into battle by his nemesis, the evil vacuum cleaner.

My mother, passing down the generational lesson that “animals are friends,” would often say that “spiders are good bugs,” and, in my opinion, really any bugs (as long as they’re not invasive species brought to delicate ecosystems) are good bugs.

Even mosquitoes feed bats, fish, frogs, and other creatures (mosquitoes actually bite us for a reason, to feed themselves, unlike fire ants, who are invasive here, and seem to reject the “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me” rule). I admit, my personal traumas with fire ants make it hard for me to love them.

Some of my best friends over the years have been non-human animals.

I was raised to think of animals as friends, and that even the small ones (like bugs, lizards, mice, and rats) that some people saw as pests, have lives, feelings, families, personalities, hopes, and dreams, and that we, as humans, are supposed to be responsible for their care (and the care of the planet around us) – which has led to me taking in many lost, injured, and stray animals (bugs, birds, spiders, felines, canines, reptiles, rodents, and even marsupials) through out my lifetime.

If they needed help, and I was able to provide aid, I’ve always felt a duty to offer food, support, shelter, care, and affection to the non-human creatures around me, because when I was young (and nobody knew I was Autistic or ADHD yet), animals were often much kinder to me than people (and easier for me to predict).

I learned animal body language and facial expressions, but not human ones, growing up.

As a kid, because humans speak and have words and could, in theory, speak to me their needs, desires, and feelings, it didn’t occur to me that I should look for information in people’s faces or how they moved.

While human body language and facial expressions, didn’t catch my attention growing up, my desire to understand non-human animals (who often do not speak with words, as humans do, unless offered great amounts of support, training, and assistance) led me to be more mindful with them, paying close attention to how animals of all species moved, comparing and contrasting their similarities and differences.

The rest of this one is available on Patreon and Substack.