Dating : A Graveyard for Small Things

I did my best, but my best wasn’t enough

His tiny body was partially wrapped in a mask. I held him gently, and rubbed his throat and belly lightly with a Q-tip. I had just put some Pedialyte by dropper into his mouth.

He struggled a bit, which gave me hope. At least some of it went down. As did a touch of puppy milk. I watched him breathe. At least he did that.

The chipmunk was the second of two tiny animals, the first an infant squirrel, that I’ve found in my yard. They fall from nests, from hunters’ mouths, they are attacked by one of two neighborhood cats. They’re usually pretty badly injured.

The first time I was sweeping the forest detritus off my deck. The tiny squirrel, its eyes still sealed shut, had a terrible wound on its neck. Something had tried hard to end its young life.

I wrapped it, cleansed it as the website on small injured animals suggested, and rushed out to purchase puppy milk and a dropper. By the time I got home, it had died.

I buried his tiny body alongside my house under the roses.

Damn it.

The chipmunk was comatose. I didn’t have much hope. Whatever had gotten hold of it had done severe damage.

Still, Nature can heal Herself.

I put the chipmunk, re-hydrated it and fed it with drops of puppy milk. Nearby on my kitchen counter I have a small sound machine that emits cricket noises. This is the time of year where the Eugene area is treated to crickets. Those that didn’t get crisped by our fires, that is.

You see, people don’t stop to think about what gets wiped out by huge fires. Food sources for billions of creatures, and those creatures themselves, burn too. We worry about houses. I worry about the horses. Those lives can’t be replaced. Houses can.

I took a long, hot bath, leaving the chipmunk next to the cricket machine, curved into a C in a warm towel.

By the time I returned, I found the bowl/bed empty. Encouraged, I looked around.

The chipmunk had managed to get itself out of the makeshift bowl. I found it stretched out next to the cricket noise machine, its nose touching the plastic.

It had died there.

Well, shit.

Ever so carefully I placed his tiny body into my palm, listening to my heart ache. Up here, I haven’t got a circle of friends yet. I’ve got wild turkeys crowding my deck for bird seed, the local raucous jays, and not too much else. Oh- the deer who also raid the birdseed. It’s lonely right now but that will pass soon enough. Once this house is no longer under constant construction I can begin the hard work of constructing a community around myself.

Meanwhile, small animals.

I buried the tiny chipmunk in the rich, soft earth of my mountainside yard. The baby squirrel’s grave is undisturbed, which surprises me, but also pleases me. If nothing else, and right now this is what I have, I have the opportunity to make the passing of a tiny thing perhaps a little easier.

Billions of small things die every day, from birds who smash themselves against large buildings or whose migratory patterns are disrupted by city lights. Cars kill foxes and deer and elk and raccoons by the millions. We are slowly but surely building passage points for those animals to cross safely.

A few years ago I listened to two radio hosts have a wicked hard time controlling their hilarity when a local woman called in to complain that the deer along the highway near her home ignored the signs that said “deer crossing.”

“It’s for their own safety,” she said, with all the self-righteous stupidity of people who watch too many Disney movies and honest-to-god believe that wild animals can read and speak English.

I would love to see what she might do out on the Okavango Delta in Botswana. I’m convinced that Sparky would expect the hippos to rise out of the water with pink tutus on and dance for her.

I don’t know how to protect the world’s animals from the criminally clueless, but at least in my tiny corner, those animals are well-fed. If I find them injured, they are well-loved. So far, my ministrations haven’t proven successful. But I’m not a veterinarian. Even then I doubt that they’d have made it.

Those tiny creatures did, however, make it into loving hands, were kept warm and protected for their last moments, given food and drink and love. Placed next to Nature’s sweet sounds.

All the Goddess’ creatures would be lucky to have such a passing.