What is the kindest thing you ever did for an animal?

A few months ago my nephew Isidore finally wore me down by sending links to interesting things on Quora, a site I have mentioned here before (methinks), where questions are asked, answered, and bandied about. I could no longer resist at a certain point, and signed up so I could answer a question. I have myself only asked a few, and I discovered today that one that I did ask several months ago has about a dozen answers, some of which are very moving, and all of which are touching in the way they reveal each author.

In reading through the answers which for some reason I just discovered I had not been notified of, I was inspired to write another, edgier question. (Which just got it's first answer, I notice.):

What is a time when you did not act to help an animal and have always regretted it, and what were the circumstances that made you hold back? Would you act differently now?

Used correctly, this site can be a great way to affirm my sense of the goodness of humans, and my part in it all. (Used incorrectly, well...you know.)

Here are the answers so far; the link, in case you want to add a reply or see if there are any more comments, is above with the original question. I would love to hear what you have to say.

12 Answers

Gillian Schifreen

Answered Jun 27

Originally Answered: What's the kindest thing you've done for an animal?

Well probably the craziest. I was on my first day as a sales manager for a blue chip company. Cream designer suit, high heels the lot. The day went well and it just happened to be the GM's 50th birthday and we were all invited out to a nice restaurant that evening. So I'm heading home on the A1M motorway outside Newcastle upon Tyne, during rush hour so luckily not going too fast, when I see a dog stuck in the central reservation. So I'm in the outside lane and I stop dead - about 100yds past him at this point. Leap out of the car in my tottery heals and race back up the fast lane as fast as I can. Lean over the barrier, picked up the dog who wasn't much smaller that a lab and stagger back to the car trying to ignore the carnage I was creating behind. A lorry driver wound his window down and asked if he was mine, barely able to breathe carrying this heavy lump I yell, "Of course he isn't bloody mine, mine wouldn't be in the middle of the bloody motorway!!!" I was in my brand new company car and he was bleeding. Nothing major thankfully, he just had a few cuts, scrapes and bruises. No way could I put him on the seat. So off came the already bloody and stained brand new cream jacket and I laid that out for him to lie on. Got him straight to the local RSPCA clinic where they took over.
A couple of hours later, cleaned up, suitably groomed I waltz into the restaurant. Everyone looks up. It appears the traffic cameras had caught the whole episode and it was on the local evening news. To be honest until the day I left the job that was never forgotten and I was always considered to be the mad one. Good news is, he was never claimed but found a lovely new family.

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Casey Wolf

How wonderful! Good for you in every way! (And not in the least crazy, by my lights.)

 

Eon McLeary, Filmmaker (2008-present)

Answered Jul 2

Originally Answered: What's the kindest thing you've done for an animal?

I used to live in Topanga Canyon, which some people have referred to as the bohemian district of Malibu, CA. It’s straight wilderness — lizards, horses, owls, coyotes, mountain lions, hippies, etc… At any rate, I was walking up to my car and my girlfriend noticed a hummingbird laying in the driveway.

Glum Facts and the Power of Song

As you may know I have been contending with a few glum facts lately, in amongst the riches of life. The struggle to find new and welcome housing, a few private matters that are weighing me down, and now the love of my life, our community garden, is being torn up to make modular housing for homeless folk. The city says they will relocate us, to which I muse, why not put the modular housing in this new location and leave us be? You can't really "move" a garden. You can destroy one and start another, but the soil carefully tended takes a big step backward, and the soil they supplied last time was riddled with horsetail spores. But all that could be handled--who am I to begrudge the homeless?--except for one abiding concern. If they move it away from the Skytrain station, I may not have easy enough access to carry on there. So again we wait, this time for the eventual announcement of our garden's fate. In the meantime, I am mourning another loss.

However.

I have also been trying to inject a little singing into my days, the last few months. When I am away or horribly forgetful or horribly busy, that ends up just being me tweedly-dumming through the day. When I am home and see my "SING!" notecard on the counter while busying myself with other things, I run through a bunch of vocal exercises and when I really get it together, like today and yesterday, I pull out my big black binder of Irish songs and run through a few.

Today was "M" and "O". I admit there are still a lot of songs in the binder that I haven't learned (but with the internet I have more hope of finding their tunes), and too many more whose melodies I have forgotten, in the long interregnum between the days of yore when I learned and sang songs galore, enjoying them at Irish music sessions with the likes of Ken Howard and Michael Dooley, and the days of now, when I almost lost my ability to sing. I have missed that music-making very much.

So what good does it do to limber your vocal chords up and sing a few tunes on your own in your room? Isn't that a little pathetic? Isn't music made to be shared? Look at all those eager folk on Britain's Got Talent. To them, singing at home is only the beginning. For me, it may be an end in itself.

When I take an hour, or half an hour even, out of my day and offer it up to song, I feel as though I have repatriated myself in the country of my heart. My body, inside and out, is completely involved, with the workout of breath, posture, and so much more. My emotions are engaged. I strive to do the best I can vocally but also to feel the song in its fullness. The result of all of this is a wakening from at least some of the weight and dullness that come with constant worry and self-criticism, coming back from fear and regret to a complete moment in which the song and myself are the only things in the world--and that is joy.

So delight with me in the full throated strains of another dedicant of the gods of music. And then, taking his inspiration for your own, open your heart and sing.

Image: 'Rufous-naped Lark, Mirafra africana at Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa' by Derek Keats from Johannesburg, South Africa [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Video: English: "Singing seriema (Cariama cristata) at Areia city, from Brazil's northeast state Paraiba (PB).

Português: Seriema (Cariama cristata) cantando em Areia, cidade da Paraíba, Brasil" by Rhalah. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.