My soft heart.

I have a new respect for Animal Rescue workers. I know this now because I can't get the image of one bloody, fear-ridden and still fighting opossum out of my mind.

Last night I was happily heading out to my 8pm class when my car was slowed, then stopped by a horrific scene. I don't know how he got there, but there was a large opossum frozen in the middle of a fairly busy street. He was still on his feet, but there was a pool of blood underneath him, as well as a bloody mess about five feet away, probably the scene of the initial injury.

As my headlights brought into focus the fact that the thing in my path was a living animal, not trash, I was sure that he'd scuttle the rest of the way across the road and into the woods surrounding us. Not so, he was standing, but couldn't move any further. All he had left in him was his voice, which he used bravely in an attempt to ward off my approaching car.

I didn't know what to do, I eventually drove around him, there was already another car freaking out behind me about my unexplained stop and a jeep pulled over to the curb keeping an eye on him. I left the opossum to his fate, but I was filled with an awful sense of sorrow for my inability to help and his obvious..aliveness. I wished for him that terror and pain and fight weren't the last things he knew.

So I called my husband at home and asked him to call animal rescue, you know, the trucks that pick up all the dead skunks, and hoped for the best. Maybe they would get there in time, maybe there's an off hours emergency vet who operates on unsuccessful roadkill, maybe he wasn't all that injured, despite the gallons of blood...

So that's my fantasy. But my reality tells me that animal rescue, if they found the opossum, probably euthanized him on the spot, then tossed the body in the truck with all the other victims of the day.

So I hope to never do that job. At least EMT's get to race their bloody, screaming, alive messes to the hospital...