When Human Help Isn't Helpful to Wild Animals

I’ve received a few emails recently asking about helping wild animals that illustrate what may not be helpful from animals’ perspectives.

Can you communicate with raccoons and let them know that a person is dangerous to them?

Our next-door neighbor has raccoons living in her blackberry bushes. For the past 5 to 6 years she was feeding them in her front yard. We took over in the summer and were feeding them in her backyard. They come right up to us but I keep my distance. Now this neighbor no longer wants us to feed them but she continues to feed them bread. We have been feeding them dry cat food. Last night I was shaking a bag of cat food and they came right up to me and I fed them outside of her yard. What I want to do is communicate to the mother raccoon and let her know that this woman is dangerous and to not trust her and instead to come to me.

I am so disappointed with this woman as she should have NEVER been feeding the raccoons.


The writer appears to think that it is perfectly okay to use animal communication to promote her agenda to animals about the neighbor who she doesn’t like. She also doesn’t realize that habituating wild animals to being fed by humans, especially food that is not part of their natural diet, can be an unhealthy proposition for the animals and humans involved.

In coastal California, next to Point Reyes National Seashore, I had a neighbor who used to feed raccoons outside her window where she could watch them. One weekend when she was not there, she came home to find the raccoons tearing the shingles off her house around the windows. They were trying to get in the house to find the bread and dog food she fed them.

We lived in an area abundant with natural food sources that were healthy for the wild animals. The raccoons’ destructive behavior was caused by my neighbor feeding them. This is why wildlife biologists recommend not feeding wild animals. People who feed bears have been killed by them, and on it goes.

I also doubt the raccoons would listen to anyone telling them to stay away from anyone who was feeding them junk food which they had developed an unnatural craving for.


Another person wrote me of a project they envisioned for helping sharks.

I’m a beginner animal communicator living in Hawaii. Many sharks around Hawaii have fishhooks in their mouths or entanglement problems. So I’m looking for a veteran (distance) communicator to help me launch a serious, ongoing rescue project on the western shore of the Big Island. I’ve taken many steps over the last year, including relocation to Hawaii, but I lack the focus and certainty to operate alone.

All the data I’ve seen about both sharks and telepathic communication suggest that we should be able to 1) send a message to all the injured sharks in the area, 2) give them my location near shore, so they can find me when I’m snorkeling, and 3) ask them to cooperate by holding still and holding their mouths open for hook removal. At times, when I’m able to concentrate, I get a positive sense when I ask the shark community for feedback about the project. However, I have not yet been approached. I have the equipment, tentative work location, and in-water protocol ideas, but need assistance with execution.

Any insight that you could offer, especially regarding the basic feasibility of the shark rescue concept, would be much appreciated and respected.


While I appreciate your intention to help sharks, I am also aware that wild animals do not live according to human desires, intentions, plans, even when these are sincerely motivated. Appointing yourself as a rescuer and positioning yourself physically, and even communicating that sharks can come to you for help, doesn’t mean they will oblige. Even asking an animal communicator to assist you may add to the manipulative force of your plan and may not be accepted by the sharks.

Too often Western mind orientations plot things out logically and want things to happen immediately or at least soon. You’re asking for a mystical connection that can’t be forced.

My deep connections happen with animals because I do not impose my energy or ideas on them. I simply “be” with them, sit in openness, and they decide if they want to connect or interact. With no agenda or idea of how animals should be toward me, they are free to be with me as a fellow being nearby, at a distance, or not, as they choose. Being in a soft, energetic openness, very often animals choose to be close and connect because they can remain in their natural state and feel that mirrored in me. They often spread the word that I am safe and understand them so other animals feel safe around me without even having to spend time getting to know me.

I have assisted animals who were trapped in fencing or nets I use to protect vegetables and other plants. I explain to them what I need to do to free them, and proceed as calmly as possible in their release. I also learned from the experience to position netting above the usual path of ground animals, like lizards and snakes. Read the story of a rattlesnake I helped out of a net.

I have been asked to do many things to “help” animals without regard to their feelings about whether it is really “help” or is interfering with their natural path and rhythms of their lives. Animals have shared with me why human ideas may not be helpful to them and how they view their lives.

You may wish to spend more time being quiet and communing with the sharks and finding out from them your purpose in relation to them and if or how they may need your help.

People who have close relationships with wild animals (including sharks and other sea creatures) have usually spent many hours, days, years, just being with them and learning from them how to be in relationship with them. They form a spiritual bond—a soulful, mystical, telepathic connection, that allows them to be on intimate terms and assist when needed. Deep communication of this kind will give you the answers you need.