I have no idea why the guy brought it to me, other than to remove it from his sphere of responsibility, but it felt like a test. Here, I present you with suffering, what will you now do?
The squirrel lay in a blue recycling bin, ontop of some gravel and a piece of tarp. It’s body no longer worked the way it always had, and whenever it tried to heave itself into an upright position, it could not. Imagine the effort– the desperate and complete effort– it must have taken to do that, again and again and again. The eyes of the animal were terrified and dull, and it seemed obvious that it was dying.
I placed the recycling bin in a shaded place, and then brought out some water and nuts, hoping that over the course of the night it might somehow recover, or die as nature had ordained.
I woke up the next day to see that the animal had lifted itself from the box, travelled perhaps 25 feet, and collapsed on the street. It rose to 40 degrees that day. The situation had become worse, and I could see that my actions had been a feckless half measure, designed to make me feel better more than actually help the squirrel. If I had more courage, I would have killed the squirrel. Or I would have picked him up with my hands, wrapped him in a blanket and carried him into the cool of the apartment. I would have done more than the bare minimum necessary to excuse myself of moral repsonsibility.
It’s funny, when we’re on social media we appear so responsive to suffering, so brave. We stand in solidarity. We sign petitions. We boycott and shame. We make bold proclamations, as if calling troops forth to battle, our virtue and sensitivity shining like fires. But in the real world? When we’re actually called to suffering?
Well, I didn’t do much. My efforts were just enough to make me feel better, you know? I got the squirrel onto the grass, tried to shield it from the sun, and once again set out nuts and water.
As I sat at my desk I could see the squirrel through the window as it lay immobile, occasionaly spasming as it tried to right itself. Other squirrels were arriving, not to help, of course, but to take the nuts I had laid out. It was unbearable to watch, and so I called Animal Services.
They arrived, plucked the squirrel up off the ground with an elongated grabber, swiftly put it into a cage, thanked me for my, I don’t know, participation, and then left. And that was that. The animal’s suffering, the animal’s death, was no longer my responsibility.
Whatever the test was that I was given in the form of this injured squirrel, I am sure I failed. And I cannot help but think of myself online, up to my neck in this absracted reality where we’re all so certain we know what the good is, and how to accomplish it. But when I was literally handed a small opportunity to alleviate another creature’s suffering, my intercession was insufficient, and the unintended consequences of my actions had made matters worse.
I will try to remember this as I move through my days.
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Across from this, splayed on a bench lay a dusty, shirtless man baking in the sun, all of his life’s possessions scattered about him like discarded Kleenex. It felt like he was trying to defy his circumstance, the weather and all the people who had been trying in small ways to help him.
As I was locking my bicycle a tall, beautiful Russian woman, just as thin and cruel as a switchblade, walked toward me. She was a tennis superstar, a billionaire’s trophy, somebody who would never fall in love, and the language she used with her companion was precise and directional. There was not a sentimental bone in her body, and concealed beneath her sunglasses she was still able to make it clear that she wanted me out of her way. Disdainful, she was a supermodel who would not break stride, and I hurried in my task, trying to make myself smaller and less obtrusive as the city beyond opened up before her terrible beauty. And then, just a few moments later, a middle-aged man talking to himself, his hands a fury of unknowable intent, walked past me too, “ I don’t care, I’ll take the day off work, end up downtown and probably get a blow-job,” he said to nobody living in the visible present.
At the Real Thailand restaurant, beneath faded pictures of some Thai King, sat a scattering of elderly, single women sitting alone at various tables. With swollen ankles and sunken faces, they stared straight ahead. Their hearts and minds elsewhere, they existed within humid, little bubbles of sadness.
In front of a corner store a beggar noticed my Montreal Expos t-shirt and we fell into a conversation about the city and baseball team, discovering that we lived there at the same time. Free associating, as if on some sort of game show, we shouted out the names of all our favourite players:
Andre Dawson!
El Presidente!
Casey Candaele!
Pasquel Perez!
Hubie Brooks!
And then we reminisced about the unhurried evenings we had each spent at the Big O watching games. Sitting in the cheap seats smoking cigarettes and drinking our knapsack beer, the future we were both living on this hot afternoon so distant and unimaginable.
