i had to euthanize a chipmunk today.
we were doing yard work, and elysse came across a chipmunk which was pulling itself through the mulch by its front claws and seemed very spastic. i picked it up and it appeared to have broken its back, for its back legs and tail were like jelly, and it did not respond in any way to me touching them.
i grew up doing farm work for my father, who grew up on a dairy farm. when i was four or five, my dad taught me how to be merciful to animals, in his own inimitable way: the pony had a hoof disease, and he "put her down" while i was watching. "put her down" is a euphamism. he walked up to her, kindly petted her on the head, and she nuzzled him a bit. i don't remember very clearly how she was acting, but i got the sense that she was very unhappy. she could not walk. he used a bolt-action '22.
i thought i was going to get to ride the pony.
upon telling this story to elysse (i forget the context) this past winter at my parents' house, my sister apparently heard this news for the first time, and went ballistic. "i can't believe you killed her!" "well, she couldn't walk, and she wasn't going to heal. she was miserable. would you have rather i let her starve?" "you should've done *something*!" someone offered that fact that it was over twenty years ago and changed the subject.
but honestly, i trust this from a man who grew up tending animals on the wisdom of several generations of farmers, to whom twenty head of cattle would come at a call... he hates cats, and my mother's cats avoid him, but when one of the cats was ill, it sat still in his lap and let him feed it medicine. i still can't believe i saw that.
so here i am, looking at a lame chipmunk, seeing that its spine is broken and it is in a frenzied shock. he was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, and as i held him, he tried to get away at first, and then clutched his little almost-opposable foreclaws onto my thumb and wriggled. i pet him on the head a bit, trying to calm him down while i tried to figure out what i was going to do. i took him to the front of the house, and set him on the pavement while i went into the garage. elysse came by and saw me holding a paint can, and got this disturbed look on her face, and split to the back yard. it crawled a few feet, and then looked resigned, tired, and lost.
i made sure it didn't see it coming. i did not use the paint can.
i took it into the back yard, trying to keep my body between it and elysse; she got me a spade and i buried the poor chimpmunk under the treehouse.
this wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that it was really cute and gentle and scared and i really didn't want to kill it, and also that we then watched saving private ryan and saw a lot of people doing horrible things that they didn't really want to do. i'm going to have nightmares about what its head looked like as i buried it; it made me think of a fish that i once hooked in the eye. at least i ate that fish. i haven't told elysse about the eye thing. i don't think she'd be very happy about it.
our kitten chewed through the cable for the AC adapter of my brand new PowerBook this morning. she's still alive, miraculously.
my old roommate called me at 8 in the morning on my day off last week to yell "i have a fucking bat in my apartment!" and when it flew towards him, he shrieked like a little girl. my dad, uncle, and cousin got a good belly laugh out of that story, with lots of comments to the effect of "silly city slicker".
Mon May 26 19:40:06 PDT 2003