Well... you can probably stretch it a fair bit as far as 'blatantly obvious' goes. If a squirrel divebombs out of a tree at me and just happens to land in my previously perfectly coiffed hair I'm not going to automatically assume it's out to get me.

If several hundred birds cover the town square, making anybody walking through it have to wade through them to get anywhere, people are probably going to think "gee that's weird, did somebody leave buckets of worms all over or something?"

My point is that happens and what people perceive are different things. Everybody's got a filter they see the world through and our brains tend to perceive the world as we "know" it to be, because if we constantly questioned all of our assumptions all of the time we wouldn't be able to do anything ever.

Also: The kid can communicate with these animals - and these animals are sentient. Are all animals in this world sentient but we just don't understand them and they go about their own lives... or is it just the ones he talks to?