presently a beast

I always wonder if there is a point at which a feral human raised by wolves looks down at his wolf boy hands and notices a set of thumbs or has the sudden realization that he is the only one who can move so easily on his hind legs and then thinks to himself that perhaps his talents are being wasted in some way. The same thing goes for a dog girl. I also wonder if a monkey raised by dogs or wolves would have the same realization of not meeting its potential, but one never comes across such stories.

I suppose we are an impressionable species. If running around on all fours and eating raw meat seems the things to do, then that is what we'll do, at least until we find out that there is beer to drink and football to watch. If a baby is born into an Amish family and knows nothing more than beards and zipperless clothing, then they will proudly wear their beards and saunter about in zipperless clothing oblivious to the fact that they could be watching episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on any given channel at any given time.

I hope you like buttermilk.

Anyway, the interesting thing about feral children is the way the primal part of the brain takes over. I thought about that when my fattened spaniel was young and in the midst of seemingly fruitless housetraining. I would first yell at him in short sentences like "That's my shoe, you little bastard" or "Why did you eat that first edition paperback of Catcher in The Rye when there was a tasty copy of The Scarlet Letter sitting on the same bookshelf?" or "Stop humping daddy's Beanie Baby collection". This quickly gave way to sort words like "no" or "bastard" or "neuter". After that came a series of short and stabbing sounds to convey anger. Then I digressed to barking at him and would even growl when he appeared to be contemplating shenanigans.

I find myself doing that around children now. I don't quite go so far as to bark at them, but they seem to understand some of the same primal sounds that thwarted the dog for a while. Actually, I think there was some barking and growling involved when I was a teacher, but many of those kids had yet to make the same realization of thumbs and bipedal movement that evades wolf boys and dog girls for so long.

I've found that the other time those primal sounds come in handy is while drinking beer and watching football.