there was a pigeon dying in the driveway. it was hurting – that much i could tell. it immediately made me panic, felt like i was drowning from the bottom of my lungs. i parked on the road and quickly walked to my door without looking at it. i was distraught and didn't know what to do. those are remnants of animal trauma i experienced as a child – i watched my favourite dog run into the street and get hit by a car in a very blood ordeal. seeing an injured animal is extremely difficult for me (i rarely cry in movies but the times i have were usually related to animals – babe pig in the city, city slickers, etc). when i was 6 years old i found an injured bird in my backyard, it was a robin. my mom got a cardboard box for me to put it in, i think we made it a little bed of towels. i sat with it as it died, blood came out of it's beak. when it died we buried it under a tree. when i saw the pigeon in my driveway i immediately thought of the robin. unlike when i was a kid, i understood it was dying, and thought perhaps the only thing i could do was help it along so it would die faster. but i couldn't do it, i just waited it out. i knew it would soon die, and i wanted for someone to remove it for me. i wanted to call for my daddy to come and rescue me, to bury it. but i felt silly, so i tried to think of someone in the area, someone i could ask to help me out. but i thought of sarah, and how she had to clean up a cat she found in her street. sometimes adults have to take care of these things, it's a part of life. so after it died i got a shovel and carried it across the street, then called the health unit to let them know that i'd found a dead bird and where it was so they could come get it. the whole experience left me with mixed feelings: 1) that sometimes i need someone elses help, someone to take care of me, look out for me, to protect me. 2) that there's nothing i'm incapable of doing when i have to. sometimes i feel as thought i'm caught in the middle. i don't know if i'm coming or going. a grown child or an emerging adult. sometimes i feel stuck in between and it makes me frustrated that i'm not able to be either here or there.
i'm pmsing and beginning to feel sorry for myself. i should go to bed before i start to spiral.
you disappeared so often,
like you dissolved into coffee.
1 comment:
When I was a kid, I always checked with my dad before I saw any movie to see if an animal died in it- I couldn't watch it if there was.
I had a psycho gerbil (again when I was a kid) and he kept jumping and hitting his head on the top of the cage. On December 24 he knocked himself out and I stayed up that night, not waiting for Santa, but waiting to see if he would live or die. He died on Christmas.
I also remember a vacation to the Perce rocks and there was a bird who much have gotten clocked into the rocks and was dying and I wanted to stay with it. I did stay for quite a while but eventually my parents wanted to have dinner or something.
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