Animal Death
Roadkill. Trapping. Bugs.
To you, whoever you are,
I have three things to write about today. They are all about animals and death, which is an appropriately cheery topic for this inaugural post.
I. Roadkill
Three weeks ago I saw a deer upside-down in a ditch by the side of the road. I couldn’t see all of it — just its legs, a few inches of the top (formerly bottom) of its torso, and its snout.
The image has appeared to me a number of times since then. I wonder each time, as I did when I first saw it through the passenger window, what the deer’s final moments were like. Had it seen cars before? Was it stunned by the new sun rocketing toward it, hours after the familiar warm sun had set? Did it know that this star was cold and hard.
With what last strength did it hurl its failing body over the railing and into that open grave? Maybe it wanted to feel the soft touch of grass and dirt again before it made its final return to the soil.
I can only believe that it chose to lay down on its back in order to watch the sky in its last few moments before succumbing to the shock of sudden organ rearrangement. I do not want to know if the stars were out — I have decided that they were bright and abundant.
II. Trapping
I have a long history with liberating little critters from traps. When I was about ten years old, a mouse took up residence in our home. It was explained to me rather clearly that the mouse, cute and fuzzy though he may be (for my counterarguments had been well-anticipated), was not a welcome tenant. With what critical thinking skills I had developed in my introductory decade, I realized that there was no plausible course of action that would result in peaceful cohabitation with my murine friend (for I had already decided that he was my newest friend, sight unseen).
If the mouse could not reside in our walls, I would at least see it escorted off the premises safely. My young mind could not bear the thought of such a small creature meeting its end in a glue trap. Neither can my adult mind, of course. Eighteen years have done nothing to dampen my fellow-feeling for small creatures.
Permission to catch the mouse, granted after only a few minutes of desperate petitions, was all that I needed to enter a frenzy of scissors, glue, and string. An old box of Town House Flipside crackers (which I have not seen on shelves in many years, though the internet claims they still exist) served as the marble out of which I carved my MouseCatcher.
I spent what felt like several hours hunched in a corner of the living room, holding onto the string a few feet away from the box. Though I was unable to see the box from where I was hidden, I eventually heard the sound of small teeth piercing a cracker. The trap proved effective, to my great surprise and excitement. I quickly turned the box on its side, then heard and felt confused scratching against the walls. I was unable to resist cracking the door open for just a moment to see the unhappy mouse, unaware that it was caught in the gentler of two possible traps.
The true liberation came later that afternoon, when my dad drove us out to a nearby park to deposit the mouse. I remember opening the box again and looking at the small black eyes inside. There was little understanding behind them, but I felt that they held in them an important secret. I’m still not sure what it was.
When the mouse scampered away, I felt very proud of myself. I had saved a life.
Since then, I have saved several animals from traps. In college, there was a groundhog that I loved seeing on my way to and from class. When I saw a trap placed in the groundhog’s usual spot, I snuck out early the next morning, stole the trap, and destroyed it. That was the first time I intentionally destroyed something that didn’t belong to me. I was proud of myself for that, too.
Years later, my neighbor had a passion for trapping local critters. I was unable to save a possum that I saw trapped in the neighbor’s front yard one day. When I saw a juvenile possum stuck in that same trap a week later, I went out to save the possum in the early morning while it rained hard. My hands kept slipping while I tried to undo the latch. I eventually succeeded after enough fumbling around, but the possum was too afraid to escape through the open door. It took an apprehensive poke for the possum to get the hint, and he scurried away.
Another week later, on a less rainy morning, I saw the same possum caught in the same trap. I chastised it for falling into the same trap again, but had learned how to extricate it much more quickly this time. After that, winter came, and trapping season was over. I hope the possum survived.
III. Bugs
I like bugs. I have always liked bugs, from my earliest memory. When I was very young (maybe four or five), I remember playing in the backyard with the potato bugs I found under rocks. I would pick them up, wait for them to uncurl themselves and recognize me as a friend (or so I interpreted the gesture), then let them crawl up and down my arms.
I don’t recall exactly when I stopped killing bugs. Sometime in high school probably, because I clearly remember wanting to punch a guy who stomped on a beetle in the mall and laughed about it.
As I write this, there are three spiders in the basement with me. One hides in a small hole in the wall and amusingly sticks its legs out because he’s too big to fit. Another stays in the corner of the laundry room, up near the shelf where we keep the detergent. The last one is a woodlouse spider that wanders around, though I’ve only spotted it a few times.
I do sometimes feel bad for the other bugs around my basement that will fall prey to the spiders, but I try not to interfere with the bug ecosystem too much. The spiders are trying to survive like the rest of us. It reminds me of one of my favorite poems, “To Help the Monkey Cross the River” by Thomas Lux, which I’ve loved ever since I memorized it for a high school English presentation. Every animal is trying to survive.
It saddens me that some animals need to survive by killing others, but that’s the way of things. It’s not a very good way of things, though. I’d have set the whole thing up a lot better.
When I have these thoughts, I return often to Schopenhauer’s “On the Sufferings of the World,” which was the essay that truly got me into philosophy. He puts it better than I could, so:
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.
This also reminds me of A Christmas Carol, which I’ll probably write about next. It’s the right time of year for it.
Until then, good luck out there.
-Ryan
they're called rolly pollies, you idiot