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.

1.8k Views

 · 122 Upvotes

Upvoted122Downvote

Share

 

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.

Quora—A Web of Thought

I had avoided getting on Quora, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc., keeping my social media presence to a dull roar at Twitter and Facebook. I was pleased with this success. I know how easily I can fall down the rabbit hole and I had a big enough warren as it was.

My nephew, however, is very active on Quora, and he knows me well and from time to time would come across things he thought I'd find interesting, and send them to me. Sooner or later something came up that I really wanted to respond to, and that was it. I signed up, I was hooked.

What is Quora?

According to their website,

Quora

quora.com

Quora is a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Its publisher, Quora, Inc., is based in Mountain View, California. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.More at Wikipedia

Fair enough. So why do I bring it up here?

I do so because it is, in a way, all about writing in its deepest sense—at least, for me. There are endless categories of questions and ways to find specific people or categories of people to answer them, or you just let your question swim out into the waters and see who (if anyone) responds. I'm not much of an asker of questions. Not many pop to mind when I am at the site. But I am very often drawn in to answering.

The first and most satisfying question experience I had was when a spider half-drowned in my shower and when it recovered several hours later, it began performing odd movements. I asked the question,

Why would Pholcus phalangiodes do deep knee bends (see my comment below)?

Asked Apr 5

Then I used the search field that allows you to find specific people to request a response from. I put "arachnologist" in the field, found several, asked them, and got some interesting ideas, though no definitive answer. Quora pointed me to a related question, which had received no answers, so again I requested the help of arachnologists. Between the two questions and the folk who responded I learned a ton about my spider neighbours, connected with some lovely people, really enjoyed myself, and found a satisfactory answer to the question (which turned out to be what I had hypothesized in the first place, so that was cool). The key thing is that the behaviour I was interested in is not mentioned in writeups about this beast, yet within a couple of hours I had contacted people who knew the species well and were able to help me think it through. Citizen science lives!

A second satisfying question I asked was,

How are Irish people reacting to Leo Varadkar's politicals goals?

Asked Jun 27

This was excellent because to be honest I hadn't even heard through Canadian media (though perhaps it was said) that Enda Kenny had stepped down as Taoiseach (Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, whose job Varadkar now has), and the little I found on the internet about Varadkar was pretty cheery and meatless. So it was great to get on the ground responses to his presence in a political scene I can't easily espy from where I live.

Mostly, though, my time on Quora is spent answering questions. Sometimes my answers are off the cuff and meant to be amusing, as well as giving some genuine response. Sometimes I am drawn to think very deeply, take risks in exposing my own vulnerabilities, and work to find the best way I can to transmit my thinking, perhaps to someone who is in a position of fear or depression. That's what I mean about "writing in its deepest sense". I find myself challenged brainwise, heartwise, couragewise, and of course, stylewise. The wrong writing style will kill your message, but the right might carry it home.

I have no idea if any of my answers mean much to anyone, but I think that Quora is helping me to broaden my appreciation of the struggles people are facing, and their hopes and perspectives. I get to talk to people I would normally never encounter. And I get to dig into my foggy brain and do my best for someone, one Quora comment at a time.

Here are a few of my comments, fyi. They aren't perfect, but I think they are slowly improving.

Do other girls like spiders?

Sara Ralph upvoted this

Casey Wolf, former Spy for the Far Centre.

Answered Apr 25

I love spiders! My job as a little kid was to be summoned to every closet where my mother saw a spider, rescue the critter and take it outside for release. I felt awfully proud of myself because everyone else on earth, as far as I could tell, was either afraid of them or hated them, and spiders were in grave danger when those people were around. In fact, I was proud of my mother, too, who cared enough about both me and spiders that she didn’t let them get killed, which she knew would upset me, but let me help them out instead.