Spooked - When Doves Cry

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

An ecologist in Maine fears she will be criticized because she “communicates with animals.” Then a tiny, collared Dove told her he could read her mind. This story comes to our from our sister podcast Snap Judgment. If you want more stories from the bright light of day, listen to Snap Judgment on any podcast platform!  Thank you Sara and Lily B for sharing your story with us. Produced by Anna Sussman, edited by John Fecile, original score by Nicholas Marks. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

of a story that starts on the twist. She hears a voice inside of her. Can you, my darling, can you picture this? Today, for a very special episode, this is what it sounds like when doves cry. You've crossed over to spooked. Stay tuned to stooksters. Today we begin with a secret.

Our story is from Sarah Wright. An ecologist who writes about animal behavior and patterns in the natural world. There's one truth that Sarah knows about nature that she'd never want to speak about. I want an assessment asked pretty, pretty please, is Sarah would tell us her secret. Sarah Wright told me that if I wanted to talk to her about her story, I'd have to come to her. So I drove to Western Maine and ended up in the middle of nowhere in the mountains on a dirt road. And I got narrower and narrower until there was no road left, just forest. And then I got out of the car and walked through the trees.

All right. And then I saw a tiny old woman with two long silver braids and high cheekbones, watering a patch of wildflowers in front of a log cabin. Hello. How are you, Anna? Good to meet you. Good to meet you, too. What a beautiful cabin.

Okay, we're going to go on the porch. Right now we're going to go inside. Sarah brings me inside the cabin, a wood-walled living room with an aging couch, a screened-in porch. On her little white fridge, she's scrawled in a black Sharpie, long slanting lists of animals and plants.

I say, okay, sandhills arrive, turkey displays. I don't know, I do this every year. Grouse drums, cardinal songs, Timp Mouse arrives. Oh, it goes around to the front, to go around the other side of the front. There's bears, frogs.

She lives profoundly isolated in the woods. In the winter, she has to snowshoe to her car. But she loves the woods. She grew up playing in the great forests of the Northeast, with only the animals and her little brother as company. We had nothing to distract us, and nobody was ever bothering us. We related to almost everything wild,

everything we could get our hands on. I was three years older than my. little brother, but we were so old maids. They'd weighed through swamps and build forts and collect frogs. This one time, they even got a skunk in a live trap. My grandmother said, no, don't get near that trap. He's going to spray us. And we said, no, he's not.

He's not. He's not. He never did, of course. And so secretly, we went to the trap and let him out. And when they did, the skunk walked slowly out of the trap and then turned to the kids and looked them in the eyes. and that's when they asked it to be their friend. Did you feel he understood you?

Oh, absolutely. We both understood that the skunk knew exactly what we were saying, and of course his behavior demonstrated his response. We were friends, and we wanted to get him known better, and we'd like to see him again, all of those. all of those sorts of things. We were both so excited. We ran home.

When we ran home, we immediately told we were my parents. And, of course, what came back was we were imagining things. Well, the whole incident was discounted as a figment of two children's imagination. But Sarah was convinced that it wasn't her imagination. And this would be the beginning of a hunt she had. had about communication between animals and humans. Sarah and her brother set up the trap near their house again. And did he come back to the trap again? Yes, again and again and again. And he became kind of like a pet. But he wasn't a pet. He was a wild animal. It went on like this. They had

friendships with animals. And when Sarah and her brother grew up, still, whenever they would have encounters with wild animals that they couldn't explain to anyone else, They had each other. Sarah would call him and tell him about the conversation she had with the pheasants outside her kitchen window. He would tell her about the new skunk under his house he had befriended. It was always him, so there were always two of us, and then there wasn't. Sarah's brother died unexpectedly in his 20s.

My brother and I were very isolated, which was no problem until he died. And after his death, it became a huge, problem. It was much harder after it got to be just me, because I always had him to depend on. Once she lost her brother, Sarah's life got pretty dark. She had gotten married, but it fell apart. So eventually, after many years of living as a shell of a person, Sarah did the only thing that felt right. She moved deep into the woods, and she began to write about animals and trees. Eventually she was alone.

Some days I'm perfectly fine just being by myself. But there are other days when I am unbearably lonely. I pictured myself as a person who had a family and lots of animals. Well, the animal part for sure came through. The rest did not. She went to school and she got advanced degrees in ecology, and she could dialogue with her professors and her peers about animal behavior and patterns in the natural world. But then there were other observations.

Observations she didn't dare share with your colleagues about interspecies communication. Why didn't you want to talk about it? Because of crazy. I knew people. I was going to think I was crazy. So I didn't talk about it, period. Why did you want a dove? Oh, gosh.

That's such a great question. That takes me back when I was a very, very small child. When I first learned how to draw, and I was drawing as, you know, it's a toddler, I used to draw little doves. I had a thing about doves. I had always wanted a bird. but I could never, I could not bear the idea of having a caged bird

because birds need to fly and they need to be free. So I was never able to resolve that conflict. But then she discovered an opportunity to save a dove from potentially being killed. I don't know if I read it or saw it, but I found out that they imported African-collared doves into the U.S. to sit on exotic bird's eggs. And then they set them free, and of course, most of them died. Sarah found an average-looking African-collared dove at a pet store for $5 in a nearby town and drove him home in a little box on her front seat.

She named him Lily B, Lily because she always liked that name, and B because she was a boy, Lily Boy. And Sarah and Lily B became instant BFFs. I loved him. I just loved him. And he liked the kitchen because he loved to watch me cook. And that's how I discovered he loved Havardi cheese. Anytime I was in the kitchen, he was in the kitchen. Anything I cooked, he wanted to taste.

Lily Bee liked Mozart on the record player and sitting in the window and watching the wild birds outside. Lily Bee liked to go for rides in the car. I would take him with me and he would perch either on the seat or his favorite place was the dashboard and sit up there

and just he just enjoyed riding with me why do you think he liked riding in the car? I think the scenery. I mean always, always paying attention. We just had a life. I would wake up and he would start cooling He would just cool and co, and co, and co, and I'd say, oh, good morning, sweetheart. Sarah had become a full-time professional ecology writer, delivering articles to nature journals and online magazines about her observations and her research.

Every morning I journaled, and he was always in the room with me in the early morning. But then, something kind of beautiful started to happen. when Sarah would sit down to write her scientific observations. The reality is if I was writing about, and I was always writing about nature, and if it was something really important, he had a special triple clue that he would use. The thing is, the cool was so, it was so insistent.

It was louder than his regular coups. And at first, you know, I thought it was interesting. It took me, believe it or not, it took me six months to get it, that he was reading my mind. But after six months, I knew he was reading my mind. And I was also dealing with the fact that I might be crazy. and so that was really scary. Tell me if I have the correct understanding.

You would be journaling. Lily Bee would be next to you. Correct. And when you would have a, maybe, you know, when we're writing, you get to a point where things click. Yeah, and inside any kind of, I don't like that word, revelations. A breakthrough, a landing. Anything, anything.

And that, damn, that bird. He would coup three times. Only three times. So, for example, Sarah would begin to write a piece about her observations, let's say about mice or bears, and she would begin to work out a theory on pen and paper. And Lily B would coup three times if she was on the right track. And, I mean, it put me over the edge because at that time, you know, I had done, you know, I had done graduate work and everything is intellectualized. I had at that point been academically trained not to believe in this. So she kept it to herself.

Well, herself and Lily Bee. I mean, I knew it was happening. And I believed him. I believed Lily Bee. I mean, you do, the whole scene is, you know, like crazy old lady in the main woods. Exactly. Like a fairy tale. That's all.

You know, honestly, I've become the old woman who lives in the woods with a bunch of animals. It was kind of like a barba yaga figure. He helped to cement something I had always known about myself, which was that I was different. Lily Bee was the one that did that. So when he told, I paid attention. I said, oh, okay, I get it.

I said, if he's like this, they're all like this. All these things that I have experienced during my life, I can communicate across species. In other words, I was starting to own it to myself, not to anyone else. Does accepting that also mean accepting a certain amount of isolation from the rest of the world? Yes. So is that a trade-off in your life? I think it is, yeah, for me, yes.

You lose the ability to share your experiences with other people. That, to me, has been the worst, especially since I had it as a child. But she had Lily Bee. And for the first 10 years of Lily Bee's life, he was a reliable editor, cooing three times when her writing was headed in the right direction. Sarah never kept Lily Bee in a cage. He just lived here in the cabin with her, following her from kitchen to dining room table to bedroom where he'd sleep above her bed.

And then one day something terrifying happened. Lily B, her editor and her best friend, decided to fly away. I remember the moment of, my God, I opened the door and it was open, but he had never attempted to fly out before. After this short break, you're going to want to hear what the bird does next. Welcome back to Spooked, the Wind Doves Cry episode.

When last we left, the little bird, Lily Bee, had just made a break for it and flew out of the house to the shock and the horror of Sarah. Spooked. When Lily Bee flew into the woods and Sarah didn't know if he'd ever come back, she panicked. Because I was so afraid he was going to be killed. Lily Bee had never been a wild bird. He had no experience with predators. But eventually he perched himself on a tree branch near their house. He'd sing to me every single morning at about 5 o'clock from the lilac tree that was right outside my window.

So he never went anywhere. Sarah knew what he was doing. He was trying to get the attention of a wild bird. He's chasing the morning nose. from tree to tree right around the house over and over and over watched him the whole time fly after one morning dove after another and what do you realize he's trying to do

or what do you think he's trying to find a mate and I could feel that I knew it and after six weeks of flying after and it was springtime it was mating time and nobody loved him and then one day he did just flew home again, flew back in the house, and he stayed there. And I said, ah, got to get him a mate.

So Sarah found Lily Bee, a series of female doves, who he loved with varying degrees of enthusiasm. And then she found Lucia. Do you remember how you found her, how you found Lucia? Internet. Where was she? Some place right here in Maine, and I took one picture of her. And I ran it off the computer, and I put it up on the wall, and I said to Lily Bee, is that the bird? I went back to the internet. I said, I'll take her.

Lucia had brown feathers and was very smart. That bird was the love of his life. They were never separate. They ate together. They sat on the same branch. They, if they moved to the house, one followed the other. He taught her everything she knew. She was a real spirit bird. They slept together. They were together all day.

They were just always like this. If one flew, the other one followed, they never were separated. And sometimes he had treats for her. He would bring back a little piece of, I never really got it, you know, but he would bring her things. Like what?

Well, he bought a blueberry once. And I, one. he brought her some kind of little stone. You know, he brought her presence. When he had that kind of love, could you feel something? Oh, it was impossible not to. Tell us what that felt like as someone who's so connected to Lily Bee. There was some distance that opened up.

It's not that we didn't communicate, but there was another in the space, and I could feel that. But there definitely was a distance. Was that okay with you? Was that hard? No. I didn't think it was. I missed him. But I wanted him to be happy.

And he was happy. Lily Bee and Lucia stayed together wing by wing for years and years. Until the morning, Sarah woke up and put the kettle on and looked out the window for the turkeys and the deer, and then looked up to the perch Lily Bee and Lucia sat on and noticed something wasn't right with Lucia. He seemed like she was sort of rocking back and forth. She was not acting right. And I went, oh, no.

And the next morning she was on the bottom of the cage. When I went in, he was on his perch, but he flew down. He was so clearly in mourning. He wouldn't leave her. So I left her there. I said I'll leave her as long as he needs her. And I left her there. It was all that day.

And the next morning, I dug a grave. And I put her in it. And he watched me bury her. He was inconsolable. And so we all sat with him. He had a basket over the window, and I sat with him. He loved the Mozart Requiem. And so I put on the Requiem.

Sarah was 65 years old when she buried Lucia in a wildflower patch. She couldn't deny that her future wasn't the limitless expanse imagined in younger minds. Lily Boy's feathers were starting to age, too. His voice was getting croaky. It was time to ask her bird a question. I said to him, I said, look, if you feel like you need another mate, you've got to let me know. Because I don't know what to do at this point. You're looking at him in the eyes?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I was talking out loud to him. I said, you have to let me know because I can't make that decision. for you. I was worried and I thought it was going to

kill him because I hadn't heard it sound since she died. We go on another day

or so I'm still writing in the morning and all of a sudden I know I just know and I wrote

he doesn't want another mate and when I wrote those words he spoke for the first time he killed three times

and so I knew and then all of a sudden he's he just came back to life and that and that was when he became my bird again just the way he had been in the beginning I was in the kitchen

he was in the kitchen he was everywhere I was how long you told that he would live um It was about 10 or 12 years. Some African collard doves live all the way into their mid-teens. Lily B. is now 35 years old. You know, it's been him and me, you know.

And it's okay. He's an old bird now. He's starting to lose his vision. And we're just getting old together. It's 79-year-old Sarah, and 35-year-old Lily B. in the little log cabin. Lily Bee moved into the bathroom. And you see, the bathroom is the perfect place to have the ruse.

Because I have to go to the bathroom. So I'm in there like, what, 50 times a day? It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. I mean, I couldn't have planned it better. Let's go say hi-ed. Let's go to have him. You want to go inside?

Yeah. Okay. So now we go see the lady. Sweetie. Oh, he's nap time. It's his napar. Yeah. Hi, honey.

Hi. Hi, sweetheart. How are you? I love you. I love you. The bathroom is lined in cedarwood. Lily Bee has a perch in the corner. He looks out a big glass window onto a meadow.

He can see. He's focused on everything I'm saying. Everything. And at the same time, he's got his eye on you. And he's like, really? He's kind of like trembling. Yeah. See, you always on that?

No, he does that. He does that as part of the communication thing. He's kind of like shuffling back and forth on his brand. Lily Bee is a remarkably unremarkable looking bird. His feathers are scruffy, and he's got some bald spots. And years ago, he lost his voice. He just raised his wings when he said that. Yeah, yeah. He says, I just can't fly the way I used to. Yeah, I know, honey. Oh, honey, I know.

He was trying to fly when she was talking about flying. Yeah, well, he's talking about flying. Yeah. See, he understands everything I say. Yeah. This is why it's such a good thing to be in a bathroom because you could always have the conversation with him. What do people misunderstand about your telepathy with L.A.B.?

I don't talk about it to people because nobody understands it. Are you worried about this interview going out? I was initially. I said, I never talk about this. I have reached the point now where I'm just not shutting up about it. Yeah, he reads, Lily Bee reads my mind. I used to feel like I had to explain all this stuff. It's like the nice thing about being a very strange old woman

is that I am free to say any damn thing I want. All I have to offer is my own experience. experience that take it or leave it. If you don't want to believe that interspecies communication is a reality, that's your problem. So much Sarah and Lily B for sharing her story and thank you so much for sharing your connection. The original score is by Nicholas Marks produced by Anna Sussman. This episode comes to us from our sister podcast, Snap Judgment, if you dig it, don't miss a single journey. Take your phone out right now. Subscribe to the

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