Sorry to be gruesome but this is what I stumbled across today while gardening for extra cash. I saw something red-ish in the walkway, and thought “eww maybe it’s like a bird leg or something”. I could have been so lucky. I could have at least shook that image. Instead it was literally a little chipmunk face with part of it gone and when I flipped it over… it was just like brains. I mean the wild can be cruel and that doesn’t shock me, but it was just such a disturbing image that it has stuck with me all day.
The weirdness of it all was that the chipmunk’s eyes were closed and it looked semi-peaceful, until you saw that there was nothing else. It was just freaky. I wondered where the rest of it was and what that poor chipmunk went through in its last agonizing minutes on earth. And for one split second…it actually made me grateful to be human. 99% of the day I’m wishing I were anything but, to avoid all these shitty complicated emotions, but when I saw just how cruel it can be on the other end…it made me realize how at least the safety that being a human has, is at least something.
Well, nothing too profound, just a weird occurrence in my day that led to a solid 10 minutes of gratitude towards my humanity. I gave the little guy’s little head a proper burial.
Weird how I desire my own death but seeing an animal’s can affect my whole day. I guess no one really wants death at all. It’s in our nature to want painless peacefulness; not gruesomeness and pain. Just the pain of a mind that can’t be tamed sometimes seems the crueler fate than a few minutes or hours of agonizing pain to the flesh. Weird how that is.
6 comments
I actually liked your post cause seeing a dead animal affects me a lot too. You even gave him — I mean, his head — a decent burial… I’d probably do the same, seriously.
Though I’m not sure about the safety of being human… Some crazy axe psycho can show up right now and kill us tonight– which wouldn’t be that bad, in my case. And we’d be just like that poor chipmunk.
Thanks, I’m an animal lover, and on principle I feel it necessary to bury the dead but something occurred to me just today… We do the whole ceremony of burying the dead like it’s right for the dead but really…it’s for the living that we that. Cause we don’t want to see the dead since it’s so disturbing. I buried the poor thing’s little head cause I didn’t want to end up stepping on it or touching it or something too!! On top of the fact that it was a once adorable creature, and deserved some care even if it couldn’t acknowledge it was being given.
See I thought about that, how we’re safe in some ways but not totally. I guess humans at least have a concept of civility that they try to uphold. When it comes to the wild…it’s like all is fair in love, war and the wild.. anything goes. We at least have some protection in place.
I can understand your point of view, yes, the whole ceremony is mostly for the living.
The fact that you gave him a burial reminded me of a cat that died at my backyard a few months ago. I tried to bury him but relatives stopped me, ugh. “Let nature do its work”. Oh well, while nature was working I had to see him rotting.
All is fair in love, war and the wild.. anything goes…yup.
Why wouldn’t they let you bury the poor kitty? Nature will do it’s work whether that cat is above or below ground, believe you me. Sounds like they were just trying to control you or something. But I’m suspicious so if that’s not what it felt like to you..don’t mind me.
They’re control freaks over here, trust me!! But they think thay touching dead “disgusting” animals is dangerous, I guess. They apparently never heard of gloves.
or a shovel. that’s what I used and I’m still kicking (unfortunately) ha