Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Sad Learning Curve

Last Monday our neighbour came to my door with a box.

"I have a new lodger for you" he said.

I look at a box to find a tiny lil creature who looked like that:


"What the hell is that!" I've said.

At first I thought it was a baby Chinchilla rabbit.

"It's a jackrabbit!" he said. "I went that far to smash it with my ATV, it was all alone in the middle of the ATV road"

I accepted, though I was worried a bit about how I would take care of the thing.

I put it in a big cage and as I was working rapidly gave water and food then told myself I would take care of it asap.

After work, I started to check the net to discover the heartbreaking truth:
Baby hares have no scent so the mother hides them away from the den while she hunts. She does it usually right in the open covered with grass or leaves ... They stay there waiting for her returns.

Basically ... it was a very bad news.

1. The baby didn't really need help.
2. There was now no way I could find back the mother. (as my neighbour didn't really remember where he exactly took the baby)

I started freaking out.
We tried our best but this morning, husband found the dead baby in the cage.
It let itself die obviously.

It's hard to know everything as it's hard to not feel guilty.
Though, I kept telling myself that I am not the one bringing him back here plus where it was he would have had probably be smashed by an ATV before his mother would be gone.

The lil one has been buried in a quiet and charming place on our land. That first death is preparing me for the many others to come. I have to stop pretending it won't happen. It will. It's part of the circle. I have to learn to deal with it. Husband and I have decided that this part of our land would be the cemetery.

That's the hard and sad learning curve we have to go through.

And I can already hear the "judgements" of people who would so have done better ... sigh.

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