The following videos present Quichua narratives on rain and weather.  As a guide to understanding them I suggest the following four theses:

1.  In Quichua thinking weather is an outpouring of the local earth's emotions whether of sadness, joy, sexual arousal, or anger.  

2. Because humans, plants and animals are a part of this local earth their emotions are also closely tied to the weather. 

3.  Because their emotions are tied to the weather the sadness of people, plants, or animals can cause or "call" rain.  Human crying or the sadness expressed in the drooping of thirsty tree leaves can trigger an empathetic sadness in the earth which results in the crying of rain.

4. Because the emotion of people, plants, and animals are all tied together their emotions affect each other.  This means that one species can feel and express the sorrow of another.  Certain species like the swallows that circle high into the sky at the end of the dry season or the trees whose branches extend high into the air are better positioned to communicate the desire for rain that many smaller terrestrial species feel and hence they, more than others, are said to call rain.

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