“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.”
(T. S. Eliot)
As preparations get underway for Easter Sunday, that day of celebration of the resurrection, my heart is heavy. In this business we see far too much death and so my thoughts are darkly clouded with the irony of a human world eager to rejoice in life while ignorant of the slow death coming soon to a nestful of wee baby squirrels somewhere nearby.
It started with a loud, urgent banging on the front door late this morning. I opened the door to see one of my neighbors carefully holding a grown black-phase Eastern grey squirrel. Apparently the squirrel had just been found prostrate beneath a car parked around the corner, victim of the heedless juggernauts that hurtle down these narrow residential streets with no thought for anything except the immediacy of their own little desires.
The squirrel was a female and though she wasn’t in good shape, except for a badly banged ear and closed-head trauma she appeared intact with all extremities functional. More aware than not, she was, however, fading fast. I was able to get some pain and antiflammatory medication into her and began to work on her flea problem before putting her up in a quiet place; all that can be done under such circumstances. As I examined her it became clear that this was a nursing mother. By the looks of things, she had probably given birth just a couple of weeks ago and had left her hairless, blind, and deaf babies in the nest this morning with plans to be gone only long enough to stretch her legs and find something to eat before quickly heading back to keep them safe and warm and nurtured.
Only a careless driver had ended her plans.
And after no more than half an hour after her arrival here, that careless driver had ended her life, too, and has most likely ended the life of her babies who are waiting patiently for her return.
I have had the privilege of watching a mother squirrel care for her young and I can assure you of their true and touching devotion . Regular in their habits and timings, their wee babes learn the routine very quickly, putting up no fuss as mother takes brief breaks to care for herself. But I have also had to watch what happens when their mother fails to return; how the babies come to realize that the time for her return has passed and their wait grows longer and longer and longer.
And it is utterly heartbreaking.
In that one case I was able to easily take the babies from the nest and they were successfully raised and released. In this case, and in others I have encountered before, the chances are slim that anyone is going to hear those wee babies when they begin to cry out from hunger and then from fear. The chances are even slimmer that when most of them gather the courage necessary to leave their birth nest and, in total helplessness, attempt to go find their mother, when they inevitably fall from the tree no one will find them. And in the end, they will curl up in the tiniest balls of resignation, shivering from both cold and fear, and eventually they will breathe their last. That is, if a cat or a crow doesn’t find them and torture them to death first.
And all of this will go unnoticed by the humans who share this small city neighborhood with them.
Bless the handful of neighbors who took the time to check out one usual nesting site this afternoon on the chance that is where this mother squirrel had taken up residence (she had not) and will listen and watch for any clues or signs over the next few days. I will certainly be listening and looking during my evening walks.
As this particular evening, Easter eve, now grows near and the winds rise wildly, bringing in the chill that portends the coming rainstorm, I will also be spending a lot of time crying at yet another needless and tragic loss of life.
