Saving Animals

You know when you're little and you want to save everything? A bird flies into the window, you rush out and put into a container with tissues, wrap it up and keep it warm with a bottle cap of water. And it lies there with its little neck broken, screaming inside "put me out of my misery" and you happily make it a little jacket and some flying goggles so it will see better next time. And then you put it into the hot water cupboard* and check on it every ten minutes to see if it was up and awake from its coma.  

After a couple of hours of waiting for it to move again, you'd take it outside, throw it in the air and encourage it to fly, fly away.  And it it would drop to the ground like a lead balloon and finally you would realize the futility of it so you would have a funeral and all of a sudden, there are a dozen small mounds in the back yard with dandelions artfully arranged across the top**.


Then there were the baby possums that you saved after the mothers died*** by pulling them out of the pouches and sticking them in a box with an old sweater and trying to feed them milk with an eye dropper.  Not knowing if they drank milk, or at least cow milk, but feeling heroic, virtuous and like you were rearing the next big thing in possums.  Then the possum would crawl out when you weren't looking, slip into the sweater and head back to the farm so it could show the other baby possums the latest in possum sweaters.

And then there was the time you saved a baby lamb and put that in the hot water cupboard.  That was a nice surprise for Mum.  But you didn't do that again...

*I don't know if America has these, haven't seen one yet. Basically an airing cupboard that contains a water heater. Growing up, Mum would put the line-dried clothes on the shelves in there to air them out and then tell us to take them upstairs to our room. And it took days to get them there. I'd put the clothes on the stairs first and then walk by them for a couple of days, then move them up a couple of steps and then eventually throw them on my floor.
**And no bird because the cat dug it up, brought it inside and tried to pass it off as it's own kill and you feel like the poor thing will never be laid to rest...
***Cause of death unknown but given that they are pests, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that there were suspicious circumstances