TERRY MOSHER
As I have aged I have become more and more tuned in to life around me like trees, flowers and the animals that co-exist with us. It has made me feel that we should live more in harmony with all the other life around us, and it hurts me more and more when I see things that are not in harmony with that harmony.
You might know by now that I don’t like to kill things – even spiders that invade my space – and you might have read about the time a couple years ago I found a squirrel lying behind our car in the driveway. I couldn’t figure what had happened to it, and I assumed it was dead.
I picked it up and put it in the garbage, thinking that was that. I figured it must have missed a branch in one of our surrounding trees and fell to the pavement, killing itself.
Wrong.
A day later I went to the garbage and noticed the little fellow was still warm. It was alive! Shocked, I stepped back and tried to figure out what was going on. It’s then that I came to the conclusion it had broken its back and was paralyzed. That triggered a range of emotions in me, headed by strong feelings of empathy for the squirrel. What a terrible thing to have happened, and what must he/she be thinking and in what pain must there be associated with this disaster.
I didn’t know quite what to do. So I called the humane society and they suggested drowning it or bringing it in to them and they would do the dirty deed. I laid the squirrel on our picnic bench thinking that maybe it was just stunned and that it would get up and walk away at some point.
It didn’t happen. So many hours later I filled up a bucket with water and struggled with what I was about to do. It took me about a half-hour to finally place the squirrel under water until it was no longer breathing.
All this time later, I still think about that squirrel. Don’t ask me why I do, but I do. It was such a tragedy and even though I put the little guy out of his misery, it was something that is foreign to my nature to do.
Then this morning I’m reading about Raju the elephant and all of this emotion comes crashing down on me again. As if I needed some more things to press on my mind and my emotions.
Raju, it turns out was beaten and held in captivity in India for 50 years. The story I read online told of him being, “Shackled in spiked chains and forced to live off scraps from passing tourists.”
He was finally set free on July 2 by Wildlife SOS and walked as a free elephant on July 4, the day of our independence.
Here is part of the story of his rescue:
“Raju was in chains 24 hours a day, an act of intolerable cruelty. The (Wildlife SOS) team was astounded to see tears roll down his face during the rescue,” Pooja Binepal, a spokesman for Wildlife SOS said. “It was incredibly emotional. We knew in our hearts he realized he was being freed.
“Elephants are majestic and highly intelligent animals. We can only imagine what torture the past half a century has been for him.”
Nikki Sharp, executive director of Wildlife SOS, added this in the story:
“They (the rescue team) went to rescue him and they (his captors) had bound him up so tightly that he was in a lot of pain. The vet and our team came with fruits and just started speaking softly to him and to reassure him that we were there to help, and it was that time that tears flooded down his face … he was weeping. It was an emotional moment and everyone was more motivated to get him on the truck and to safety.”
Raju is now being treated for wounds and being introduced to other elephants. Elephants live to about 70 so his rescuers are hoping he has at least another 10 years in front of him. And now they will be good years.
The things us humans do to each other and to animals is awful. Why do we do these things? I guess we will never know why, but it still pains me whenever I read or hear such things. So be good out there, do the best you can with your life and with others.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.