It was easier to be what people thought me to be, than to be who I knew I was. One person waiting told another that I was probably retarded, so I exaggerated my blocks and took on the role of a retarded child. When my turn in line came I could not say my name. The event that haunts me most in my life happened when I was about 15 years old. The pain in my hand was nothing compared to the anticipated pain of pity and ridicule. Now I wouldn’t have to read in front of the class. Without thinking, I dropped a pencil on the floor, bent under the desk then stabbed the pencil through my hand so that I had to be taken to the hospital.

I could usually plan some diversion to get out of it, but one day I was taken by surprise. The greatest of all terrors was to be told that I had to speak in front of the class. So at some point in my early years, I just stopped talking. That boy is never far from the surface.Īs a youth, my blocks were so severe that my body would twist and spasm in trying to get a word out. Yet not a year has passed, not a country traveled in, when I have not felt again the little stuttering, insecure boy inside who’d come home from school and hide in a corner of his closet. I have been called the “Indiana Jones of Wildlife” by the New York Times and given lectures all over the world to thousands of people. I have documented lost cultures such as the Taron, the world’s only Mongoloid pygmies. I have discovered new animal species in northern Burma and in the cloud forests of the Annamite Mountains.

I have lived for days in caves chasing bats, I have captured and tracked bears, jaguars, leopards, tigers, and rhinos. “For the past 25 years of my life, I have lived in and explored some of the most remote places on earth. At some point in my youth I clearly remember realizing that animals were like me, even the most powerful ones I'd read about or seen on television - they had no voice, they were often misunderstood, and they wanted nothing more than to live their life as best they could apart from the world of people.' 'Animals listened and let me pour my heart out. 'Animals were the only things I could talk to as a child,' he explained during a Stuttering Foundation workshop.

His love for animals began when he was very young. He established the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve in northern Myanmar, which is about the size of the state of Vermont. Alan Rabinowitz, Ph.D., who passed away in 2018, was an explorer, wildlife conservationist, and author.

Cougar by Alan Rabinowitz