Shi:
Alright, nature freak week is underway. Today we are freaking out about animals, our fellow other living biological beings on this planet. They are diverse. They are unique. They are varied and many and beautiful and we celebrate them here today on the Kay & Shi Show.
Kay:
Now a quick shout out here at the beginning to our beloved pet animals. Kay here. I have a beautiful, pure bread, German shepherd. Her name is Luna. She is such a protector girl and we’re so glad to have her as a part of our family.
Shi:
And we have brother dogs, Buddy and Boomer. They are five years old this summer, which is kind of crazy to think about and we love them so, so much. Two black labs. Kay and I always grew up with black labs. These labs come from two yellow parents, but we were buying them in replacement of our 10-year-old black lab who had died. Fun story, our son, the night the puppies were born, who did not know we were getting puppies said,”Hey mom, I had a dream last night that JB–our old dog–licked a litter of puppies and they turned black,” and we found out that the puppies were black. So, so fun when we got to pick out our two black labs, I guess they were meant to be with our family, Buddy and Boomer.
Kay:
Well, what a fun, spiritual kind of interaction with the animals…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…through your old dog, bringing you the new black labs and we definitely have felt a good spiritual connection to animals for our lives, particularly birds and whales.
Shi:
Yep. In fact, our mom gives us our love of birds. So, shout out to our mom.
Kay:
Hey mom.
Shi:
You’ve always had the posters or the books. You notice them on drives. You talk about them and identify them. When I was younger, I just wasn’t at that level. I never was disinterested in it, but I never quite understood the interest and here as I get older, I definitely feel more attunement to the bird life around me. They’re majestic and amazing, beautiful creatures and so I feel so blessed that we get to observe them here on this planet and they’re here in such abundance.
Kay:
We have a lot of birds in our community and our area of the world is actually a hotspot for one of our favorite birds, which is hawks.
Shi:
We love hawks. In fact, for me, a guide that’s come forward over and over again through just learning and teachings and growth is Marcus Aurelius, the famous stoic leader from ancient Greece, and he really stood for a lot of amazing ideals. I just get this idea that his spirit is carried in hawks. So, we like to call hawks “Hawkus” or “Hawkus” Aurelius.
Kay:
So anytime we see “Hawkus” we know that we’ve got protection happening. We know that we are connected to one another. There are a few hawk nests that are present here in my neighborhood. We’ve got a lot of big trees and so we see them often, we hear them often. It’s just wonderful to kind of have that reminder. Our mom really loved hawks when she lived in this region as well and so they always remind us of her. Then we even have birds that remind us of our family members. Whenever we see blue jays, our Nana passed in August of 2021, and now whenever we see blue jays, we just know Nana’s near.
Shi:
That’s Nana. She’s with us and we just love to notice the birds and watch them. We feel that they have a subtle, spiritual, energetic signature to deliver and if you can be tuned into it and pick up on it’s amazing. Of course, owls are incredible too. Our mom gets to experience amazing bald eagles and herons and beautiful bird life up there. But as Kay mentioned, we love birds, and then, Shila here, I have a special love for a very, very large creature, the largest mammal, in fact, whales.
Kay:
Well, whales are fantastic, and we feel so lucky that our parents live on the Oregon coast and get to be in a place where we get to witness whales pretty often. At least once a year we get to see them. They get to see them all the time. But we get to see them in the waters, and they are just majestic and beautiful and large and mysterious in their own way because the sea world is so much different from the world on land.
Shi:
Right, and they’re just so ancient and I’ve heard them described spiritually as kind of the timekeepers and wisdom keepers of the earth and I love that they bring forward whether it’s that energy or just that energy in general of being humongous and yet gentle and slow yet intentional and seemingly so wise and they’re just so beautiful. There’s a famous story in the Chad and Shi couple where we went on a whale watching trip early on in our marriage and there was a whale really close, but I was so excited. I do this whole thing on the video where I’m like, ooooh, ooooh running over to the side of the boat, like oooh.
Kay & Shi:
A whale.
Shi:
So here we are 12 years after that trip, Chad will still go…
Kay & Shi:
Oooooh.
Shi:
Yeah, about whales because I just love them that much.
Kay:
Well, Shila actually even has a small whale glass totem that she picked up while we were in New York at the natural history museum where there is a giant blue whale…
Kay & Shi:
Replica
Kay:
…hanging from the ceiling and it is incredible, and that little glass whale is a beautiful spiritual totem that you carry to this day.
Shi:
Yeah. I love it. Our little whale stands for protection, and we like to bring him on trips and hold him and it’s been fun to have him in everything from conference settings to airplanes and everything in between. It’s nice to have a physical anchor like that to remind us of our great animal friends, the whales. Before we sign off on the animal portion of nature freak week, I would love to just give a quick shout-out to–I know of my own evolution and you as well–towards the smallest animals on the planet. Those little insects, those spiders, those flying things. Things that I know in the past I would’ve just murdered because they were inside of my house. I know, I’ve become more and more apt to try and save it when I can.
Kay:
Well, life is to be respected in all kinds of ways, and the more that Shi and I have grown in our spiritual journey, the more respect for animals that we have found in our life. In fact, if you are listeners frequently here of the Kay & Shi Show, you know that we don’t eat animals any longer in our diet. That was something that was a part of our world for a long time but has come out as our spiritual connection to them has grown. So, we hope you’re enjoying nature freak week here on the Kay & Shi Show. Today, we talked about animals and next up we’re going to discuss bodies of water.
Shi:
Yeah.
