save what you can

_{^{Wounded-crow handoff to wildlife rehabber.}}

I didn’t expect this to get to me like it did.

Too often, I find myself uttering those very words. Yet, live and learn, that’s what they say we’re supposed to do. At least that’s what I’m led to understand it says in the manual on being human, if anyone could ever find a copy to check. In any case, I am historically a lousy candidate for any such tidy causal chain.

I live, sure, increasingly creaky and cranky, but very much still alive, yes, and kicking, or at least twitching. But as for the learning? If you know me, that question likely answers itself. Myself, I have long since begun to suspect that at this advanced, let’s call it, juncture, I simply won’t. Learn, I mean. Ever.

Though clearly, there’s no great guarantee on the whole continued-living business for any of us, either.

I advance this flaw of mine here – my living and not learning – because it just recently happened again, in notable fashion, even before I could fully process it having occurred not long before that as well.

It starts, or finishes, with this: Lisa and I have, among our six rescue pets, two much-doted-upon dogs, an old “boggle, or beagle-boxer mix, Maggie, and 3-year-old, still-puppyish Mal, who’s what’s known in local pet-rescue circles as a standard eastern North Carolina black dog, a lab-pit-maybe-a-bit-of-hound-and-whatever-else jumble of breeds.

Maggie, even now at 13, and no longer so fast on the chase, still maintains an obsession with bunnies, of which our small-town neighborhood hops rampant. Young Mal, however, is far more smitten with squirrels, though bunnies for her are still plenty good fun as well.

By good fun, I mean the dogs will pursue, and kill, these living yard toys, if not prevented from doing so. Thus far, Mal has taken out one young squirrel that I couldn’t get to fast enough, while a couple of years ago, Maggie casually murdered an adult bunny whose readiest escape route, beneath our back fence, I had unwittingly filled in with dirt.

I hardly blame our pups for these violent ends; it’s hard-wired into several of their various breeds, after all. I blame myself instead, because, I reckon, that’s my own nature.

Now fast-forward to several evenings ago, to right at dusk, when Maggie flushed a small bunny straight into Mal’s path, and the rabbit still somehow managed to escape, and through that same fence hole I had this time intentionally left dug back out. Except.

Except that during Mal’s part of the chase, dedicated old Maggie snuck back to where she’d just flushed the bunny, uncovering a new nest in a shallow hole beneath a thin covering of pine straw and wild strawberry. She then promptly, and fatally, wounded one of the three barely formed babies, such that I soon after was bludgeoning its bloody head on the off chance the limp thing was somehow still alive, and suffering horribly on the way to its inevitable death. I buried the lifeless pulp in a plant bed out front, the whole experience pretty well ruining me for a bit, just as similar circumstances have in the past.

I am, generally speaking, not a big cheerleader for death, even less so when I am to be the one who ultimately brings it.

Those other two tiny lives I gently placed back into the hole where Maggie had discovered them, covering it over with more straw, and blocking it in with some wire fencing bought, ironically, for shielding certain flowering plants from hungry young bunnies.

Periodically after, I visited that spot to sniff for death, which grows pretty pungent in a humid Southern summer; happily, nothing. My hope was that Mama Bunny had since returned to move the two remaining newborns to somewhere safer; now upon my fully investigating, yes, empty nest, yay.

Still kind of a lousy little story though, isn’t it? And it arrived, as mentioned earlier, close on the heels of yet another, so settle in for a bit more joy before I attempt to bring all of this together into some kind of a point, though I wouldn’t exactly hold my breath on that last development.

And again

A few weeks back, a close friend joined my wife and I for dinner out on our back porch; it was a slightly cooler summer evening. As I belatedly came outside, I found our friend staring uncomfortably in the direction of our fence.

Neither of them initially said anything, however, so of course I pressed them on it, with our friend then insisting I didn’t want to know. Because she and Lisa both understood where it would end up once I did. I have a well-known M.O. in such circumstances.

Our friend finally stood up and pointed over the fence, to a yard across our street, where a big crow was hobbling in pronounced agitation, struggling, and failing, to fly, its right wing stuck abruptly out to its side.

It took not even five minutes of my futilely attempting to not let this get to me, nursing idiot delusions that the situation would somehow right itself, and that the animal would be fine, before I set out across the street – because of course I ultimately knew better. I was quickly then back home and on the phone, tracking down a regional wildlife-rehabber who then put me in touch with a young woman named Devynn, who was even more local, and who encouraged me to try to catch the wounded bird. I could see across the fence that it had by then pressed itself up against a wildly overgrown hedge at the edge of one neighbor’s yard.

Back I trekked across the street, this time with a towel and a small pet carrier, and my wife’s and my friend’s hopeful good wishes. The bird, however, had vanished. Fearing the worst, I nonetheless starting poking around inside the hedge, finally spotting the wounded creature huddled some ways inside. So, in I went as well. These bushes are so overgrown that I could actually walk around inside them. Somewhat.

My pursuit dragged on for a while, the wing-dragging crow somehow consistently outmaneuvering me – and me, not too long since back surgery, struggling to navigate over low branches. The bird even exited the hedge once before going back in, with me following suit.

When the crow came out a second time, my chase drove it behind some low bushes close up against the neighbors’ house on the opposite side of the hedge. I managed then to get the towel over it, per Devynn’s instructions, doing my best not to injure the frantic creature further. I got it into the carrier, and slowly walked it across the street, to my own front yard.

It was now stretched flat across the bottom of the carrier, beak open, panting; I was certain it was not long left for this world, and that I’d likely made things worse in my efforts to capture it.

A little while later, just after dark, and I am meeting Devynn’s boyfriend, Alex, about 20 minutes away; Devynn was then still at work. Alex and I talk for a few minutes, as he adeptly moves the bird into a new carrier; he tells me he’s 24, and that he and Devynn actually met when he brought a wounded young deer to her for treatment, and that he often now helps out when she’s unavailable. I am instantly fond of him.

I can, however, safely say I have never before handed off a wounded crow to a kid in a pumpkin-orange Mustang at the dimly lit edge of a gas-station parking lot on the outskirts of town.

For the next couple of days, I check in with Alex; he clearly can’t remember my name, calling me “buddy” in every text, which makes me chuckle. And things appear increasingly positive for Bird-o (I had by then named the crow Bird-o, yes). Alex and Devynn had gotten the bird to drink and eat a little, and it was even standing upright again. It turns out it wasn’t its wing at all, but apparently a broken foot.

I was extremely pleased that what had seemed the inevitable awful ending had proven to be otherwise. So a few days later, I texted Alex again, figuring this to be my final check-in. It was, though not at all for the reason I had imagined.

The couple had found the crow dead upon getting up that morning. No obvious reason; most likely whatever had caused the outward wound – a car, a cat, whatever – had also caused some unknown internal damage as well.

And, once again … I didn’t expect that news to get to me like it did.

Which is really what all of this is about. Not Bird-o’s death, not even the baby rabbit’s death. My own reaction to those deaths, and others past.

I’ve thought a good deal about this over the years, how I am selective in my protections of, and affections for, certain types of animals. I absolutely lose my shit over a helpless or hurt cat or dog, for instance, and to a not-much-lesser extent, a wounded squirrel, bird, etc.; I go into what I have dubbed Frantic Frankie Savior Mode. I don’t seem to think at such times; I just react.

One night some few years back, I leaped out of a moving vehicle into my town’s busiest road to retrieve an unconscious, probably already dead cat, which my first wife and I had just seen get clipped by a passing car. When I jumped out, with absolutely no warning to my ex, a semi-truck was, no joke, advancing even then in my direction; I literally tripped up the curb, limp animal body in my arms, in my spastic efforts to get out of the way.

My relaying this is in no way meant as any kind of backhanded self-praise. My behavior was stupid, and unequivocally so. I could so easily have died, with that cat likely terminally wounded, or already gone, regardless.

(It actually lived, by the way. We got it to the emergency vet, where it turned out only to have been badly stunned, finally sitting up and shaking its glassy-eyed head a bit. The next day, I went back to where we’d found it, and actually located its owner in a nearby house. Happy ending. Who knew?)

Stupid is as stupid … well, you know

I have hoofed it down rural roads to retrieve box and/or snapping turtles from the paths of oncoming traffic, often just in time to see some wretched SOB making a beeline ahead of me to hit, and kill, that particular disoriented terrapin, with me arriving at last at a hideous pile of shattered shell and bloody raw meat.

So many of us humans, we higher animals, simply suck, you know that?

You can guess, no doubt, that I do not hunt, though I cannot realistically hold objections to the practice, when it’s food-focused, and the animal’s death is swift. All bets are off for me, though, when it becomes trophy-oriented; I confess to secretly cheering whenever one of those gunned-up dinky-danglers is instead mauled, or killed outright, by his intended prey. A little Charles Darwining is sometimes all you can ask for.

I did, long ago, very much enjoy fishing, by the way. I used to with my old man, and like that.

Which is all to bring us to this: I do eat meat. Not as much as most folks, but still, plenty, and even more seafood. I know in the former case how those animals are raised; I’ve been to eastern N.C. hog farms when working on newspaper stories, and “living” conditions were abysmal. In the latter case, aquaculture, too, ain’t no great shakes, either for the animals or the environment.

I also personally know people who keep pigs, cows, goats, horses, sheep and/or rabbits as pets, all animal types domesticated to some extent to trust us, their human handlers. I have eaten all of the above species as well, though in two cases, quite unwittingly.

Because that last detail is far from the point here. The point is you can find me, knife and fork in hand, and go rare on that burger, please. Also, only the dark meat in that chicken bucket, cuz I find the white meat too dry.

My flippancy is not because I am in any way making light of any of this. I’m simply owning what is mine. I joke because, well, you figure it out.

I’ve had vegetarian acquaintances come at me angrily over what they label my hypocrisy. I’m not one to play it off by doubling down, making some pointedly inflammatory “chicken is a vegetable/everything is better wrapped in bacon” remark to hotly end the conversation on the spot. My position is, in fact, quite hypocritical. I am fully aware of that.

It would perhaps be easy to lay all of this at the altar of cognitive dissonance, something we so-upright hominids are quite gifted in employing to sidestep ownership of our own worst behaviors. But that strikes me as just a little too easy, as well as rather strongly missing the mark.

I think it instead comes down to simple familiarity, and personal association. Selective compassion, plain and simple.

If I have some warm personal connection to your species, I will try to save you when it seems saving is warranted. I will, often to extremes, also mourn your loss when saving is, for whatever reason, impossible.

When Lisa and I have had to euthanize one of our own pets when that beloved creature’s health has finally failed, I am utterly inconsolable at the loss. At times right after, you could have found me in a fetal ball on our floor, screaming in grief. Really. Screaming. Just fucking howling. It destroys me. A profound enough pain trumps pride every single time.

Too, I am, like much of the world, horrified by the practice in parts of Asia and Africa of farming dogs and cats for human consumption, and under the most wretched of conditions. Barbaric, it seems to me. These animals were domesticated to depend on us, and to trust us.

As with cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, etc., in this country as well, of course. Though with those likewise intelligent, affection-prone animals, I have no personal loving connection, which gives me a slight out, perhaps, a slight dis-connection. I mean, they don’t any of them sleep contentedly atop me and nose-nudge me when I’m feeling blue, tiny sandpaper tongues licking my own whiskered chin in fondest devotion, or dance in four-legged joy to see me sleepily navigate down the stairs around 5 a.m. to let them out each day, following a full night of my absence.

If the animal is wild – a bird, a squirrel or a rabbit, or an opossum or a racoon, whatever – my connection seems to be with something bigger, beyond just that single life. Failing to save these creatures, even from my own creatures, feels too much like giving up on the whole ecosystem itself, which is a bit nuts, I’ll give you, and more than a little dramatic. But that’s honestly what I think it comes down to for me.

Now, lest I come off for even a second, in even the slightest way, like some would-be Heroic Earth Warrior, just a quick reminder that a nice Italian sub, squisito!

About two months ago, Lisa and I rescued an anole right out of the mouth of our magnificent orange tabby, Biggles, sending all other nearby pets into commotion as the loosed reptile skittered across our kitchen floor, under stove and refrigerator, with murder-minded Biggles in passionate pursuit. I finally nabbed the little green lizard, transporting it outside into a bush, where it rapidly disappeared, bearing no obvious puncture wounds, and with only the very tip of its re-growable tail missing. I’ve seen Stumpy Leezard (yes, I now call it that) several times since, lazing on our front porch. (Another happy ending, except for sad Biggles, who searched in vain for his stolen prey for about 20 more minutes). I do adore me a lizard.

Lisa is, however, terrified to her core of the legless variety, snakes. The harmless brown ones, common to where we live, cause her consternation on par with a rattler dropping by and using its coils to ring the doorbell, then hissing howdy, y’all, howdy! Neighbors have on several occasions asked me to remove snakes from their own yards (as I do with the bigger ones from mine, because, Lisa). I relocate them to a nearby woodsy park, as methinks snakes in general the most fascinating of critters.

Right now, a family of voles is doing its damndest to lay waste to my hard-fought backyard lawn; tunnel-ridges are everywhere. I nonetheless do my own damndest, angrily grumbling as I go, to save the ugly-cute little grub-hunters from my hunter-digging dogs, who’ve proven quite vividly in the past that in just one bite, vole no more.

I will even come back to a section of grass while cutting or trimming my yard, so as to not risk the life of a cricket, a single cricket, once I’ve seen it hidden there. I so love the chorused chirping on a soft summer’s night.

There are these lines from a better-than-average Jack Kerouac poem: “I … suffer. Even for bugs. I find upsidedown. Dying in the grass.”

And I quite get that, Jack, I truly do. Mostly. Cuz this is where even that notion gets a bit tricky.

Let a filth-flicking fly invade my home, or a disease-vector roach, or a known breed of venomous spider, and I will attempt to end those critters right then and there. Lisa sometimes jokingly calls me Mr. Miyagi, after the Karate Kid sensei, and while I’m no pluck-a-bug-right-out-of-the-air Barack Obama, I nonetheless have developed a strange gift for hands-only fly annihilation.

As for mosquitos, those winged blood suckers – you will know my death-whapping disdain by the smear of my own life’s essence upon my skin.

And fire ants, oh, fire ants! Outright premediated slaughter, bitches. I will stand just back from the mound, spending 10 or so minutes drowning the furious little monsters’ underground nests with a hose sprayer set on “full,” their tiny white eggs bubbling up and washed away, then cover my destruction with a film of ant-deadly diatomaceous earth, the planet-friendly killer.

But those are just insect pests, many among us might say, forgivingly; we all lose it a bit when a mosquito lands on us. And sure.

So what, then, of the Burmese python, perhaps, imported to Florida as a “pet” that once escaped/let loose, found its species’ fate flourishing in the rapidly shrinking Everglades, at further expense of that fragile, invaluable ecosystem? Or the seemingly insatiable Asian carp, washed out of hurricane-flooded aquaculture ponds to quickly overburden the Mississippi River system, native critters be damned?

I’m all for culling, which is a nice word for selective killing, in such cases, as swiftly and humanely as possible – though I’d rather not be the guy brandishing the big rock over the limp baby bunny, if you will.

Selective compassion

I named that fallen crow Bird-o, by the way, at least as I refer to it now to myself, the name perversely drawn from that unsettling scene in No Country for Old Men, where evil-incarnate Anton Chigurh forces a coin flip on a visibly terrified old storekeep – heads you live, tails, not so much.

In the coin toss for my bird friend-o, I clearly guessed wrong. Though let’s be dead honest here, this isn’t my loss; that crow was hardly my devoted pet but a just-met wild animal, which quite realistically could itself have met a completely wild-animal fate, like a hawk attack.

I mean, I didn’t actually lose anything here, did I? So why does it feel like it? Why does it always feel like it?

First of all, never name something you are not prepared to be hurt by if it disappears.

The loss, in human terms, in my human terms, isn’t really about the death of a bird I had, you might say, just met, however intense our meeting. It is, as I alluded before, about some perceived failure on my own part to prevent a creature that was moments ago vibrant and alive from being lost to the ravages of what we humans so cavalierly do to our world, our own home, as it were.

And sure, there’s no small amount of my own selfishness and ego at play in my inevitable paroxysms of grief to follow, but separate your own self from your personal sense of self, if you can, and then, sure, judge my hypocrisy anew.

To be clear, I do not mistake myself in any way for a god, the God, or any other. I am steadfastly an unbeliever anyway, though that’s not actually relevant here. It’s that I simply don’t think it my innate right to choose what should live, and what should not, though you could argue that my broader actions say I must actually believe otherwise. Perhaps a little of that cognitive-dissonance stuff after all?

I’ve certainly never bought into the whole Biblical assertion that we humans have been granted absolute dominion over the animals, and over all of the Earth, especially since that convenient excuse is routinely bandied about by we very same humans as justification for the outright ruination of those utterly irreplaceable things.

I ultimately think our reasons for trying to help save wounded non-human things, even in our personal doses of cherry-picked species-ism, are less important than the actual helping. Maybe we’re trying to save some vestige of our own selves somehow? Maybe it’s really honest altruism, though cast through a hazy web of personal experience? Maybe … ?

Maybe, and maybe, and whatever. Just save what you can, I say, whatever you are called to. Because if enough of us do, then maybe? Just maybe?

I can say that if I can’t personally help protect the little things that fall broken in my path, due, as often as not, to some human inhumanity, sometimes indirectly my very own inhumanity, that it feels to me like I have personally contributed to a decline in the fate of our increasingly, this rapidly faltering, planet. And to the decline of a bit of myself as well.

Meanwhile, I’m still scarfing down chili cheeseburgers and swatting down flies with my increasingly arthritic Myagi hands, perhaps picking my allegiances just out of mere convenience – you can accuse me of that, sure. Because I very much like chili cheeseburgers, and I detest flies. I prefer my bunnies alive (though not eating my coneflowers), and my crows cawing vociferously from the tops of neighborhood light poles. I want my own pets to live forever.

I know I’m reaching here, and I’m not at all sure what I’m trying to grasp. My round-peg-in-square-hole reasons for my own actions don’t ultimately make all that much sense to me, either.

I’m not one who believes in some lovely bridge that our fallen four-legged companions cross to find their way into the heaven we humans cling to, many of us even in various levels of disbelief, as our own eventual reward – a “place” that for animal lovers cannot possibly be Paradise without beloved old Pup-Pup or purrful Mr. Whiskers there to greet us again. I wish I could hold to that rosy view myself. No, alas, dust into dust, that’s what I believe, for the creeping and crawling things, the hopping and flopping things, the flying and flitting-about things, the little stinging things, the adored cuddly things, just like for the rest of us.

I only hope that someday, the dust of long-gone Bird-o again can take flight, the way its living body used to. Because at least that’s poetic. And the very best poetry (sorry, Jack) can be fucking beautiful.

And there you have it. If you thought I was gonna arrive at an actual answer to something here, I warned you, no; you have perhaps come a very a long way for nothing.

Now get up and go hug your pet, if you have one. And at the very least, do your best to keep it from killing birds. Or bunnies. Or lizards. And meanwhile, would ya just listen to those lovely damn crickets tonight, over the sizzling sound of your own greasy backyard grill?

Save what you can. As best you can.