Saddled with a nagging feeling

I was dining out last week -- OK, I was at McDonald's -- when I spotted a news crawl underneath the television screen: "Derby Winner Barbaro Euthanized." Just as we were leaving, I mentioned to my guest -- OK, it was my mother -- "Weird. That horse died."

The news struck her like a 2-by-4. Or as if a president had been assassinated. As we drove home, I was spared no detail of Barbaro's heroic struggle with laminitis, his five surgeries, his grace under pressure, yada yada yada.

And it's not just her. The Washington Post printed an appreciation for the 3-year-old nag above a salute to the late Congressman Robert Drinan, who trotted around the halls of Congress doing God's work -- and ours -- three times longer than Barbaro was on the planet.

Barbaro-mania is far from over. I counted well over 100 entries in the online comment book posted by the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary school. "Dearest Barbaro, You were an inspiration to all of us here in Massachusetts," wrote Greg, from Needham. "We walked to the local farm and broke the news to the horses. They were devastated. You were very courageous, my dear horse. I hope you are happy in horse heaven."

Indeed, there is plenty of back and forth concerning Barbie's final resting place. The museum at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, is vying for the ashes. Delaware Park is also interested. I'm thinking Equine Valhalla or perhaps Arlington National Cemetery. Here's a bet you could have taken to the window: Barbaro didn't end up in the glue factory.

Part of me turns a cold eye to the hot tears flowing over Barbaro's passing. In her Washington Post paean, horse owner/novelist Jane Smiley recognized that, "Yes, to those who don't care about horses, terrible things are happening all over the world these days." I am one of those people. But I also find myself haunted by this nagging feeling: Are animals better than people? And I have reluctantly concluded that they are.

Among the clips taped to the doors of our kitchen cabinets is one that reads: "Patients benefit more from time with pets than people. " A UCLA study found that 76 heart patients showed improved heart pressure, and lower epinephrine and anxiety levels, after visits by dogs than after visits by humans, or humans with dogs. "Dogs are a great comfort," said nurse Kathie Cole , who wrote the study. "They make people happier, calmer, and feel more loved."

Well, yes. And you have to ask yourself, who would you rather have visit you in the hospital: that sister you've been fighting with for three decades, or someone who growls in an affectionate yet non-threatening manner when you fill his water bowl?

I bet if they did a follow-up study at UCLA, they'd discover that patients prefer stuffed animals to Homo sapiens.

Even fictional animals are better than fictional people. I've never been so moved by an imagined world as by the riverbank brought to life in Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows ." How can I not identify with Mr. Badger, a "kindly but solitary figure who 'simply hates society'," explains Wikipedia. "He can be seen as the wise hermit, embodying common sense." That's me, all right. There is an alluring, minor heresy in the Christian church that wants to place the zoophilic St. Francis, and not Jesus Christ, at the center of our worship. I am tempted to join.

So now the question is: Why are animals better than people? Well, regardless of whether you learned about our origins from the Bible or from the biology department, animals preceded us on the planet, which affords them superior knowledge. Also, they don't talk much, and reticence is often mistaken for wisdom.

Take it from the French poet Gerard de Nerval , who used to promenade his pet lobster through the streets of Paris at the end of a blue ribbon. Why a lobster, passers by would ask? Because, he replied, they are "peaceful, serious creatures, who know the secrets of the sea, and don't bark."

Now that's an animal anyone can love.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.