Eating Elephants

There is a place in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids where pavement flows into cobblestone, and cobblestone meets skycraping structure that stands on the wayside of the grand river. Standing 23 stories tall, this structure reaches up to the heavens and acts as a lookout tower, peering out over the city and all of its hourly bustling that is displayed during a twenty four hour time lapse. For me, it’s not some place I hold in high standing, yet it is a place where I go to make a paycheck and I suppose have something of a social life. Like most of us, I’m sure I could find a good gripe or two about my place of employment but that isn’t what this passage of literature is about. It’s about waking up. It’s about shaking the cobwebs out from a hibernated think tank, mine own. It’s about contemplation and even finding use in the simple fact that I woke up this morning. It’s about finding the differences in a little bit of today that looked a lot like yesterday. It’s about dignity in death, and searching for a label of labored self love. This is about the rat in the roundabout and how it sent my emotions on a trajectory flight with no cruising altitude in sight.  

The city is a strange place to inhabit life, nonetheless, you’ll see all walks of it strolling down the streets of Louis and Campau, Pearl and Monroe, Fulton and Ionia as well as a plethora of others. Insects, birds, rodents, dogs, cats and the strangest of them all, humans. I also feel as though a city is no place to fully seek out a meaningful and purposeful life that speaks to one’s soul and it is certainly a balancing act in trying to find the right medium between quiet contemplation in a small town or in the woods, and an endless disturbance into the void of noise and distraction. Yet, we all have to provide for ourselves somehow with some sort of compensation in these trying times and the city it would seem is a black hole for financial opportunities as well as empty employment. 

To start this story off, in the attempt of tying it all together and hoping that it makes sense, perhaps even striking a chord with someone who might be reading this, I should begin by stating that I have a deep affinity for the lost soul, the damsel in distress, the broken hearted and the down trodden. This affinity resides in all walks of life and it certainly doesn’t conclude with just human beings. I’m a sucker for the underdog, after all, I’m sure each and every person has experienced being the last man picked on the team or perceived as not being good enough, counted out and told that we will never amount to what we should hope for ourselves. It’s in those moments where a gentle touch or a kind gesture could have been the difference between life or death. Countless have been the times that I received them in my own life and I’ve no doubt that they will present their warmth to me, time and time again further down the road. 

I’ve always found time to help creatures of need or present meaning in their life that also may have concluded in death. When I was younger, one of my childhood best friends and I found a couple of abandoned baby squirrels by the side of a road. We couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, yet that didn’t stop the empathy from welling in our hearts. About a mile and a half away from my house, strolling on the seat of a couple of bicycles, we scooped up the tiny little tree traipsers, stuffed them into our shirts and rode home; one hand on the handlebars and the other cradling our shirts with the squirrels safely nestled inside. Upon returning home, we found a shoebox with some tissue paper to stuff inside of it, a heat lamp and a couple of soft needle syringes for feeding them. I don’t recall exactly what happened to them but I remember the feeling of what it was like to help something other than myself that needed a certain level of assistance. It was a rewarding feeling to expand that kind of energy unto another living creature, and in the end I think we ended up taking the squirrels into a rehabilitation center. 

My sister and I would find stray cats and dogs around our childhood home, pleading and begging our parents to accept them into our family as one of our own. On a couple of occasions they gave into our cries for these animals and we always had a cat or a dog in the house at one point or another. When they would die, we would bury them in our backyard and say a few words of remembrance, creating rituals and certain rights of passages to ease their passing into the next world. Those rituals were profound moments for me, teaching me valuable lessons about life and how we can still hold our loved ones close to us in death. Their life was to be celebrated rather than mourned and grieved over. 

I have carried those moments with me even into my 30th year of life on this planet, burying dead animals and saying a few words over their grave. This brings me back to the roundabout and showing respect for the wildlife even within the city limits. I have buried a bird in that roundabout before as well as a mouse that passed on from this world, also burying a couple of other birds in different spots in Grand Rapids, all while being on the clock at my job. It’s almost like a tick that I have and it can bring meaning into my otherwise fruitless escapades at work. Just two weeks ago, Earth day made its annual appearance on the calendar via April 22nd. The next day I made my way into work for what was otherwise a pretty ordinary work day. The foot traffic was low and the volume of cars coming into the hotel were even lower. At around 9:30 in the evening, I peered out through the wall of windowpanes into our motor lobby and saw a young woman walking towards the roundabout, cradling something ever so gingerly in her arms. I’d seen that posture and that stance before in myself, carrying an animal that had been hit by a car or carelessly kicked by a person. Sure enough she went into the middle of the roundabout, sat down upon the mulch and the dirt and beside the boulders that separate earth from cobblestone, she was providing aid to something in its dying moments. I walked out to her and asked how she was doing to which she quickly responded in kind with an apology and a promise to be out of our hair quickly. I told her that she wasn’t  bothering me and that she could carry on with what she was doing. 

“What happened?” I asked. 

“I think someone must have kicked this rat, or it got injured somehow and it can’t move very well. It was in the street so I just wanted to get it away from all of the bright lights and be there with it.”

“Is there anything I can help you with or bring to you, maybe some water?”

“We can try giving it water but it’s in pretty bad shape right now, some hand sanitizer would actually be awesome if you have some.” I went back inside and grabbed a bottle of water, a small plate to pour the water onto and some hand sanitizer and went back to the girl seated next to the Japanese Maple Tree and provided her with the items. We talked for a little while longer and I inquired about her name to which she replied “Toga”. Bringing a smile to my face whilst I reminisced about my days of plodding along on the A.T.; her name so reminded me of a trail name and there was always a story behind each unique title. Toga had a sui generis tale of her own life I’ve no doubt about that. It takes a unique individual to have the courage and wherewithal to pick up a rat and just sit with it, especially after understanding that it probably will not make it through its injuries. 

“Well Toga, this was a beautiful thing that you did tonight. Not many people would help a rat out the way that you are this evening.” 

I told Toga what my name was and that I would be just inside if she needed anything else. About 10 minutes later, our security came by and I’m sure they asked her to keep it moving along. A situation I figured would happen, yet, it saddened me nonetheless. I could relate to Toga in such a strange and weird way. The fact that I knew what she was doing and what she was holding, even though I couldn’t see the animal in her arms, before she even got to the middle of the roundabout felt like some sort of mystical power within my own DNA. A telepathic revelation of sorts that I would indeed revel in for the remainder of the night and the prevailing days to come. I spent the remainder of my shift that evening contemplating on whether or not I should try to provide further assistance to the rat and after evaluating its labored movements I decided to leave it be. Part of me wanted to take it to the park just across from John Ball Zoo, hoping that its final moments might be a little more peaceful than in the middle of that roundabout. In the end, I decided against it and muddled along on my 45 minute drive back to Muskegon. 

The next day proved to be a pretty hectic day at work and when I finally managed the moment to check the roundabout, the poor animal lay lifeless. The upper half of its body shrouded by a shrub and the lower half sticking out in the open, limp and attracting flies to its corpus. I felt a pang of sadness flush over and dwelled on that sadness for the next hour of my shift. I decided not to let it affect me too deeply though, reminding myself that life and death go hand in hand. The former is not more beautiful than the latter and the latter also cannot be beautiful without the former. I wasn’t really able to find the time to manage the rat throughout the evening, however, after a couple days off, when I came back to clock in for another shift the body had been removed. 

As we fast forward about a week and a half to Saturday, May 2nd, the city was determined to allow its high energy to prevail throughout the entirety of the night. GVSU’s graduation was occurring as well as countless other events and happenings going on and I ran nonstop for about 10 hours. At the end of my shift, I wearily clocked out and sauntered back to my car in the employee parking lot. The moon was one day removed from being fully illuminated and it was truly a spectacle to behold that evening. On my way home, I especially took my time navigating through the streets of Walker, then into Lamont, flowing into Eastmanville and finally jumping onto the highway. There is a point where the boundaries of Lamont and Eastmanville collide and as I was crossing over from one to the other, I noticed something on the side of the road that caught my attention. I see critters out and about almost every night on my drives home but usually they are scampering across the pavement. This thing was just sitting on the side and didn’t budge as I drove by at a clip of about 45 mph. I had to find out what it was because at first glimpse it looked like a goose. As I turned back around, probably blinding it with my high beams, sure enough it was a goose remaining unmoved as I approached. I got out of my vehicle and walked up to it. To my surprise the bird didn’t take flight or even try to make an escape. The closer I got, the more I realized that there was something wrong with the little gal and as I pulled up right next to it, I noticed a limp leg hanging out of that typical ‘legs tucked under breastbone’ goose posture. 

Immediately my mind splintered back to the rat and Toga and all of my experiences with lending a helping hand for an animal in need. I decided to pick it up and move it off the side of the road into some softer grass as my mind whirled with questions about the Canadian Avis. How did it end up right here, how did its leg get injured, was I the first person to stumble upon it? Undoubtedly it was scared when I picked it up but I sat there with it for a good 30 minutes trying to think about what to do, my eyes drifting back and forth between the goose and the moon. Finally, I heard some coyotes start to yip in the middle of the night which finalized my decision to pick the goose back up and put it in the back of my car. It fluttered its wings a few times but didn’t put up too much of a fight with me and we were off. I turned my stereo off for the remainder of the car ride and spoke to the animal as if it were my own personal therapist, telling it stories of my life and my troubles. The goose was surprisingly calm for the entirety of the ride and when I got back to my house I found a box, punched holes in it and got a bowl of water, setting the goose in the box for the rest of the night; she would be my own feathered guest for the evening, allowing me the time to figure out what to do with her in the morning. 

When I awoke I went downstairs to check on her. To my relief she was still alive so I began a deep dive scour of the internet for what to do with injured animals. I ended up reaching out to the West Michigan Wildlife Center and I was able to get in on the listing of ‘injured animal drop off’ in Kent county, about another 45 minute drive away from Muskegon. I spent the day napping and checking in on my friend after a long night of worrying about her and wondering whether she would be alright; I WAS TIRED! At about 4:00 in the afternoon on Sunday, I checked in on her once again and the bottom of her box was covered in goose shit. While all of the research had told me to keep the animal in a dark box, undisturbed until drop off, I felt a sense of guilt wash over me. No living creature should have to lie in their own defecation and she had been in that box for about 15 hours too long. I took the box into my backyard, gently grabbed her out of the enclosure and put her in the grass. I gave her some water and she kind of picked at the soil around her, looking for a bite to eat. I also ended up changing out the bottom casing of her box and put a new piece of cardboard in there for her to sit on. Finally, I gently washed her with the hose in the back of my yard, all of this generating a very surreal experience. I don’t think she slept too well that night either because as we sat outside in my backyard, myself pretending to be heavily invested in a book, she was ever so slightly dozing off and occasionally remembering where she was, whipping her head back around to check on me. 5:15 had rolled around and it was time to head out to Kent County for the allotted drop off. I put her back in the box and into the back of my car and we were off. 

I should note that the weather of the day felt incredibly abrasive with wind howling at the southwest corner of my house all day and grey skies casting a gloomy approach to everything. On our drive out to Kent County, the sun had finally shown its face and the wind had slightly subsided. Upon arrival, they had me fill out a sheet and then I gave them the goose and thanked them for doing what they do. I was off to return home and exhaust a sigh of relief in a sense, glad that I could see the process through. 

I told my mother about the whole ordeal with the rat at work and Toga and she said something that made me tear up a little bit. “She showed dignity in death, even for so reviled a creature.” There is a beautiful quote in a book called the Road by Cormac McCarthy about creating meaning out of thin air, to evoke purpose in the smallest of moments. “All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.” This is where the soulless can meet the soul filled and breathe life into even the most mundane of acts. Don’t ever grow too big to care about the ugly, and always show dignity in the face of death.