If you’ve ever found yourself pining for a four-footed friend back home, Jesper Lodin offers his sympathies in this week’s Culture Column.
Errr, maybe it’s just me and my emotionally stunted ways or something, but I actually found it rather easy to part from my loved ones in moving to Lund. I mean, my father’s a pretty brilliant fellow, but I just don’t have that much use for his body, you know? Seeing as how I derive about 95 % of my appreciation for him from his soul, and I have that on tap thanks to the smartphone in my pocket (the other 5 % stemming from his use as an opponent in ping-pong), I don’t feel as though I’m bereft of him in any meaningful way, generally.
So really, a phone call every day with my parents goes a long way for me, and then they can go back to decrying societal change, laughing at Dilbert cartoons and planning their lives around their espresso maker or whatever it is that parents do when you aren’t looking, as far as I’m concerned. Same goes for my sister, friends and relatives, pretty much.
But our pets are a different story.
We’ve always had pets in my family, and my parents currently have a cat and a small dog. Despite their tendency to issue some rather erratic commands, we’ve treated each and every one of them like little sultans, complete with a small court of harried servants (i.e. us humans). I guess it’s a testament to their charm that despite having jumped through some rather groan-worthy hoops for their sake over the years, I still prefer animals to, uh, plants and babies, or whatever the opposite of animals is.
I mean, as great as life in Lund is, it’s very hard not to miss having pets around. They’re alternately hilarious, confusing, adorable, and incredibly stupid, but they’re pretty much hirsute heroin (hairoin?) for someone as accustomed to their presence as me…
…with the possible exception of those times when they wake you up at 4 AM just to demand you come downstairs and watch while they eat meatloaf.
Now, I would be the last person to deny that yes, sometimes domestic animals drive you utterly stonking bonkers, but life’s an insipid decaf version of itself without them, even as they’ll probably end up shaving a good two-three years off your projected lifespan… Maybe it’s just the Stockholm Syndrome talking, but their affectionate idiocy burns so bright and true it’s absolutely endearing. It’s like having a demanding but incredibly entertaining screen-saver for your home.
Luckily, my neighbor has a cat with a proclivity for bringing home friends and colleagues, presumably to discuss the finer points of staging toe assaults and taking late-night strolls on piano keys, which occasionally renders our yard a veritable feline sociopathy conference. And you do see the occasional schnauzer strutting down the street all high and mighty just because he was able to mobilize all 14 of his IQ points in pilfering a sandwich off someone’s lap or something. Still, it’s pretty slim pickings around here.
But hey! I shan’t fret. For anyone that shares my interest in fauna, I put together a ‘zoologic playlist’ of sorts in the Öresund region that’s bound to ease some of the pain. If you go through with all these, man, you ain’t gonna want to look at nothing but robots for the next couple of months or so.
First off, there’s some comforting hand-on-fur-therapy to be had at your local 4H Farm (http://www.ostratorns4h.blogspot.se), where you can stroke farm animals to your little aching heart’s content. Those places are actually geared towards kids, I guess, but what the hell… As a grownup willing to line up to pet goats, you pretty much check your dignity at the door anyway.
You can also go porpoise watching (http://kullabergsguiderna.se/en/tumlarsafari/) along the northwest coast of Scania. If you don’t know what porpoises are, well, they’re the smallest members of the Delphinidae family, kinda like a pocket dolphin. They might not be as accomplished as their smug, overachieving dolphin brethren, and certainly less brainy, but still a pretty nifty animal.
The Blue Planet (http://www.denblaaplanet.dk/en/) is a recently opened aquarium in northern Denmark, and thus readily accessible to anyone capable of operating a train ticket. It’s a cool place to go for sure, with its vortex-inspired architecture and deep sea ambience, but there’s a bazillion interchangeable fishes that do nothing but stare blankly ahead, mouth agape, in the manner of someone pondering why a carrot is more orange than an orange. Still, don’t miss the astonishingly interactive sea lions at the end, easily the highlight for me.
Finally, there’s Skånes Djurpark (http://www.skanesdjurpark.se), which is the official zoo of Scania, and therefore keeps mainly indigenous Scandinavian critters. Swedish wildlife is in many ways a mirror of the average Swede, so expect to see animals that are polite, well-adjusted, and just a smidgeon too shy and inhibited to tell the pretty cougar down the road they’ve been saving up their saltlick stone all week if she’d like to come over and mate a little.
