Welcome back to Teller. Issue 2 brings you another helping of truth and lies, fact and fiction: this time with added bite. Not for the first time, we have found ourselves drawn to animal stories, so in this issue we let the theme run away with itself.

Ruby Russell and Miriam Elia give new meaning to the term political animal: from a report on Ceauşescu’s legacy to the dogs of Bucharest to canine totalitarianism.

Amber Marks, a world expert on the legal implications of smell surveillance, speculates whether Paul the Octopus might have joined the ranks of animal spies. Thomas Thwaites explores the overlapping territory of horticultural law enforcement, imagining a future of apian agents that is almost upon us.

José Navarro brings us back to more traditional working relationships between man and beast with his documentary of the Spanish trashumante shepherds’ epic journey. Amy Stein takes a sidelong look at our dislocated relationship to the natural world through encounters in small-town Pennsylvania, and Niven Govinden invites us to a nefarious hunter’s feast.

In other stories, Anton Koslov Mayr and Mark Boswell’s homage to Hunter S. Thompson casts political top dogs as unwitting protagonists in a work of gonzo photo reportage. Anna Hughes pauses an obscured conversation, and John Angerson joins a dry run at a space station. Lucy Caldwell depicts the pains of a teenage awakening, while Salena Godden awakes to something altogether sinister growing within.

Cheep cheep!