By Steven D. Farmer, Ph.D.

Joanne is talking with a friend in her back yard and a hummingbird flies up to her and hovers about half a meter in front of her face for several seconds and looks right into her eyes. Talking with her friend about the experience she realizes that Hummingbird was telling her to lighten up and not take life so seriously . . .
After a lengthy illness, Alicia’s father died. She and her fiancé take a walk on the beach later that same morning and happen to walk in front of her father’s favorite hotel. About 20 meters out a lone dolphin jumps in and out of the waves. Alicia immediately knows that Dolphin was carrying the message from her father that he was at peace in the spirit world . . .
Silvia, a mother of three, is awakened by the family’s pet cat, Buttons, who persistently meows and paws her stomach. Since this was highly unusual for Buttons to do this, she wakes up, smells smoke, and immediately gets her husband, children, and their many pets out of the house. The cat’s efforts and Silvia’s openness to hearing Button’s communication not only saves their family but helps save the majority of the house from burning . . .

These and many other stories plus my personal experiences continue to amaze and inspire me, and leave no doubt that our animal brothers and sisters love us and want to help us. It’s a matter of paying attention and learning to communicate with the animals and even more importantly, with the spirit of any animal that presents itself through a physical representative, such as the hummingbird, dolphin, or cat in the opening stories.
As Chief Dan George, chief of the Salish tribe in British Columbia and gifted actor (in Little Big Man and other films), said:

If you talk with the animals, they will talk with you, and you will know each other. If you don’t talk with them, you will not know them, and what you do not know, you fear. What one fears, one destroys.
Talking with the animals requires a broader meaning of “talk.” It’s actually more about listening—listening with your eyes, ears, mind, and senses, and being open to receiving what they’re trying to convey to us. You will see, hear, or feel the animal, or they will speak to you through your thoughts.

When a spirit animal is trying to reach you, they’ll do so in a couple of different ways. Either they’ll show up in an unusual way, like the hummingbird did with Joanne, or repeatedly over a short period of time. These appearances may be of the actual animal or else a symbol of that animal. For example you hear an owl hooting one evening, the next day go to a store where your attention is drawn to an owl figurine, and that afternoon turn on the telly and there’s a show about owls. Owl’s spirit, or Owl (capitalized ) is trying to reach you.
Whenever you get that an animal spirit guide is offering a message, the simplest thing to do is simply close your eyes and ask the spirit of that animal what the message is. Once you do, pay attention to everything that happens after you’ve asked. You may get visual impressions, or hear a voice in your head, feel something strongly, or else get a thought that pops into your head. The messages may come through internally or through external sources, such as overhearing a conversation. Although there are exceptions, the messages are typically simple and straightforward.
Sometimes the message is very easy to decipher, while other times it’s more cryptic; and sometimes the message is very obvious right away, while at other times it has to filter in slowly, such as when you experience an unusual visitation or sighting that leaves such a strong impression you find yourself thinking about it all day and into the next. In that case, let it work you. Eventually you’ll discover the meaning of that visitation and the message the spirit animal was trying to communicate.
Although I encourage people to communicate directly with the their animal spirit guide, there are a few tools that can help, amongst them my books Power Animals, Animal Spirit Guides (available November 2006), and the Power Animal Oracle Cards. The spirit animals were so powerfully involved with each of these that I often felt more like I was transcribing what they wanted to communicate in the writings.
I took the oracle cards with me on a recent visit to some friend’s, John and Rita. I invited Rita to try out the cards. She agreed, asked a question silently, and pulled the card for Fox. Fox’s simple message was “Adapt to the changes that are happening.” She explained that she’d been in a funk that day and realized that there were some major shifts and changes taking place, but had been resisting them. Fox was telling her to adjust to them. The expanded message from Fox was as follows:
It’s important and necessary to use all of the life skills you’ve learned to not get stuck in any rigid thinking, patterns of behavior, or familiar emotional traps, and if you find yourself there, to get unstuck as soon as you can. Walk outdoors, do something physical and mindless to shake things up a bit. You have to be flexible right now, and adapt to the circumstances rather than trying to make the circumstances adapt to you.
There are unlimited possibilities as to what will happen next. You can feel much more at ease and unstressed if you allow those possibilities to unfold, adjust your attitude and actions to agree with them, and prepare for your next move by being open and willing to go with it. Stop fighting the way things are or demanding that things change. Life knows what it’s doing. Trust that, and shift with the continuum, whether it moves slowly or swiftly.

The message impacted Rita positively and she felt some relief that she’d been given some positive directives and suggestions from the reading.
Another example without the cards was a communication I had with Whale spirit. We were on the Big Island of Hawaii recently and I had been spotting Humpback Whales in the ocean every day. I had just gone scuba diving, something that I’d been urged to do my some other animal spirit guides. On the evening after I had done so successfully, I went out and sat on one of the lounge chairs. While there I received some powerful communications from Whale. He first told me the reason that he and the other animal spirit guides had urged me to go scuba diving in spite of my fears was to help be more balanced. “You’re a triple earth sign, you’re name is Farmer, and you were born and raised in the Midwest (which is farm country). You get much dense with all this earth, so immersing yourself in water from time to time helps you be more balanced.”
He went on to say, “All beliefs about what happens when you die, that you either ascend into some heavenly spirit world or that your spirit goes into the earth and shows up in the trees and waters. Either way of thinking keeps your mind in duality. How about going beyond that kind of thinking into non-duality? When die it’s more of an expansion of your spirit into the allness, including both the cosmos and the earth. Both/and thinking, rather than either/or.”
Okay, that’s a bit to digest, but makes a lot of sense.
Linda wrote me about a compelling and meaningful message she received from Hawk spirit:

I was walking through the forest one day when suddenly, like a shaft of light, I felt Hawk spirit swoop to greet me, alighting her feet on each of my shoulders. I felt her wrap her wings over my eyes and whisper, “See through me.” I whispered back, “Perspective.” Even though the Medicine Cards I am familiar with place Hawk as messenger, the word perspective sounded loud and clear. With Hawk's wings softly covering my eyes I negotiated the pathway with all other senses. The natural setting became so much more alive to my senses—smell, hearing, touch and emotion. At the same time I was looking down on myself from above, like a higher-self guardian, ensuring that I was protected while enjoying the microcosm of experiences down below. Hawk then said to me, 'The perspective of the heart needs no sight, yet the blessings of our eyes is that we are able to experience life this way also. Let your eyes follow your heart.”

That’s a timely message for all of us from one of my favorite animal spirit guides.
In Laguna Beach where we live on the ocean we have many visitors, including a red-tailed hawk, doves, crows, lizards, a couple of squirrels, a raccoon, dolphins, and in the winter, California gray whales. One day as I was walking into the living room, sitting on the rail of the deck was a raven. Not a crow, but a raven. I had to look closely to determine this, as crows and ravens look alike from a distance, but ravens have a lengthier beak, are much larger, and unlike crows, are solitary creatures.
It was highly unusual to see a raven at all. So given that plus the fact that Raven is one of my power animals, I immediately knew he was here to give me some kind of message. He would caw, then jauntily move along the rail about a meter, lean down and scrape either side of his beak against the rail as if he were sharpening his beak, caw again, then repeat the sequence several times before flying off.
I was so stunned by his appearance, that at first I wasn’t sure what the meaning was. Then I heard “watch for signs and omens,” and “Stay sharpened.” I found myself noticing signs and synchronicities over the next few days that really did serve to guide me, particularly about a couple of important decisions that we were having to make. I was also told to pay even greater attention to my thoughts, as I would experience an increase in the powers of manifestation. This was the magic of Raven that I had come to know and love!
I encourage you not to believe me, but instead to be a good scientist and test this out. If spirit animal communication is new to you, be patient and stay with it. If necessary use the tools that are available to you, however always first see if you can find out what that kangaroo or that snake was trying to tell you.
If you talk with the animals, they will talk with you, and you will know each other.