Raccoons and Human Mercy

Wiki.answers.com says, "Raccoons eat mainly plants and other animals. While in their natural habitat, they eat nuts, seeds, fruits, eggs, insects, frogs, crayfish, (and other fish) and worms.

"Racoons are omnivorous which means they can eat any kind of food that they can find. In an urban enviromnent, being omnivorous means that they find discarded food in human garbage.

"Raccoons are very intelligent animals...."

And they're cute, don't forget they're so cute, with their little masks and fluffy tails and delicate, competent hands. And they have individual personalities, as the many stories of raccoon pets tell us.

This morning, in my best Little Engine mode ("I think I can, I think I can...") I gathered up household garbage and recycling, loaded it up, and took it to the dump. On the way home I stopped at a little park by the Deer Creek Bridge and walked along a path clearly created by four wheeled all terrain vehicles.

There were rue anemone, lady's slipper, fiddleheads, violets, wild strawberry blooms, lots of vigorous-growing multi-flora roses. The air was moist and warm, almost too warm. Birds sang with their springtime urgency and abandon. The creek burbled and chatted along.

Maybe a third mile along the path I came around a bend to where a raccoon and I sighted each other. The 'coon was drinking from a largish puddle remaining from last Saturday's high water. I stopped, thinking it might run. Then I approached slowly, carefully. When I was perhaps thirty feet away, the animal turned and moved toward the edge of the path. It held it's right rear foot clear of ground, and in a few slow, stiff, limping steps showed me it's hunched, scrawny, pathetic profile. Such a very injured creature, and I had no help for it, not even the mercy of a gun.

Feed it? With what? And at this time of year, natural food is available. And where would it be if I returned, and how would it know my heart?

I know there are many coons about, they are nowhere near endangered. Yet this poor creature. Dying? Healing and recovering? Perhaps. One or the other. Aren't we all, after all. And what is the compassionate response?

Every day there is newly dumped trash along the roadside where I walk. Everywhere trash is thrown into and floats and sinks into the creek. Even in this "rural" county there is no place far from roads and cars that leave dead and injured creatures in their wake. Animals get tangled in and swallow our trash, wander onto our roads. Humans dominate.

So what effect do I have in turning away to allow that raccoon the space and time to either recover or die in peace? What is the use of this deep, deep ache inside me at some core of my being? Neither business nor government nor our Easter churches, none seems to have an effective model for deeply supporting the injured and hurting among us.

Here is the poem Garrison Keilor published on The Writer's Almanac this morning:

End of Days by Marge Piercy

Almost always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you--
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot
rise--sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.

Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.

That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly
fading to black like an old-fashioned
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.
I want to click the off switch.
And if I can no longer choose

I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.
Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our
parents? Death is not the worst
thing; denying it can be.

"End of Days" by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980 - 2010. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

This morning along the Deer Creek path I'd wished I knew and carried some mercy.