Thinking it over
…
A reflection on life and events, as the spirit moves me
Give and take
By Félix Alfonso Peña
© 2009 Félix Alfonso Peña
All rights reserved
Too far past the witching hour, 7 August 2009
Occasionally life reminds me that every giving is also a taking away. Tonight the reminder came in the form of a hoarse squeak from the darkness behind my weedy garden patch.
I had stepped out the back door to get rid of a greasy piece of stale bread. Being of a frugal nature and generally fond of critters, I had used an old, stiff piece of bread, which I save deliberately, to sop up the oil remaining in the pan from frying our soybean burgers. Figuring the critters appreciate the calories and it's that much less oil to dump down the drain or into a garbage can, I typically do this and toss the bread into the yard. Sometimes a possum gets it, sometimes the crows, sometimes other birds or life forms that I do not or cannot see.,
A good fling — grab it by the corner and put some wrist action into it to send the piece spinning — lands it on or near the bird feeder hanging from the arm of the clothesline pole. When I did this tonight, I looked for our cat, Odette, who loves to lounge on the back porch and snooze or survey her domain. Odette was absent, likely out hunting, I thought, or prowling the perimeter of her territory.
About the time the piece of bread hit the lawn, I heard a hoarse squeak, and I recognized it as the cry of a rabbit in distress. I call it a squeak because it reminds me of the sound that an old squeak toy of mine would produce each time I squeezed it's round, yellow belly. I don't remember what the toy was, but I distinctly remember the sound. It's hard to describe, although boomers and older people will have an idea when I tell them that, if Carol Channing had been a squeak toy, she would have made a sound like mine.
That was the sound coming from the yard, from the darkness behind the overgrown chives and mint patch. Although I can't prove it, I assume Odette was the perpetrator of the bunny's distress. She has quite a taste for bunny crunch casserole, as we like to call it, and like all cats, no matter how cute, she is empathy-free and enjoys playing with her food. Two days ago she had brought one of her entrees onto the porch and dumped it in her water dish. She ran off with it in her mouth before I could get the tiny fellow out of his predicament, but my wife heard the piteous sound, and when I told her what it was, she went out in the darkness and barely rescued the little victim: She almost stepped on it because it was so small and the yard so dark.
Similar scenes play out on or near our back porch fairly frequently, not usually with happy endings. Assorted and messy bunny parts often wind up on our back porch or in the lawn just off it, in large part because I feed the birds — and the rabbits. Seed drops from the bird feeder, and the bunnies feast on it. More food equals more bunnies, and more prey for our hunter.
I feed the birds, not the rabbits, by the way. Think of the bunnies as collateral beneficiaries, along with the opportunistic tree rats — you likely call them squirrels — that raid the seed supply with great alacrity and skill and manage to elude Odette as surely as the Roadrunner befuddles Wile E. Coyote. But along with the pleasures of seeing the many species of birds that stop at the feeder and hearing songs from the virile — yes, virile — song of the cardinal to the cricket-like trill of the redwing blackbird to the mewing of the catbird, we get rodent viscera and a little bit of nature drama to contend with on our back porch.
So I'm trying to do a good thing, feed the birds, although it's for my own inspiration or amusement, and bad stuff happens because of it. Whether I've tipped the scales of bunnydom's suffering one way or the other, I cannot say. Some may call me a hypocrite, of course, for caring about the bunny. After all, I hardly concern myself with the chicken whose death throes lie discreetly beyond the freezer where the carcasses, conveniently naked and scrubbed clean of blood and offal, wait side by side to be tossed unceremoniously onto the scale, into a plastic bag and thence to a cart, on their way to an encounter with our hungry jaws. Shouldn't these birds rate as much compassion as the rabbit whose death throes I witness or whose cries reach my ears or mortal remains stain my porch?
I could ponder that, but the truth is, they don't. Whether that's a failing or simply my nature does not concern me at the moment, although I won't go so far as a fellow reporter, a Scotsman, who teased a vegetarian co-worker that questioned why he felt no compassion for the cow that gave up its life so my friend could have his steak or hamburger. "Without us, those animals would have no purpose," averred the Scotsman.
The purpose here is all mine, but it has effects beyond my intentions. Without me, in this case, the birds would have a little less to eat — a lot less in the winter — and our cat would have fewer animals to torment and devour on our porch.
I am trying to do a good thing. Am I? I think so, although sometimes the hoarse squeaks from the darkness remind me: Life just isn't that simple; even when you give a little here, you take something there.
|
