Man vs Nature

The wife and I just took a ride to do some interim food shopping. You know, just enough to get us to the next paycheck.

Bopping down a quiet country road, there is a commotion, people pulled over and waving us to slow down.

Someone had hit a deer. It was sitting in the middle of the lane. We pulled to the left and passed within a few feet of it. I looked down on this beautiful animal with big, warm brown eyes and was jolted. It was sitting so quietly amidst the commotion, amidst the pain. It's hind legs were obviously hurt. Actually I hope it was in shock and feeling no pain. To think otherwise breaks my heart.

So peaceful, so regal sitting there, when inside this animal must have been experiencing overwhelming terror.

Whenever I see the suffering man inflicts on animals, I hate humanity. We invaded their world and made it dangerous and unpredictable for them.

On the flip side, I am not a country boy, not a survivalist. I am pampered and soft. I need the roads, the cars, the convenience. I could not live as they did hundreds of years ago.

I am caught between love of all things natural and reliance on all things unnatural.

We shopped and headed back, hoping fervently that the deer had been tended to. There was a vetinarian office nearby on the same road. We fantasized that it's injuries were minimal and that it could be nursed back to health. It seemed so alert sitting there.

We were wrong. It was lying by the side of the road in a snow bank, dead. I assume someone had shot it or it died because of it's injuries. I do not want to believe that someone just tossed the thing aside and allowed it to die. My heart will not go there despite mind numbingly repetitive proof of human cruelty.

A raw encounter with death on a simple stop gap food shopping trip.

Minutes before we headed down that road, the deer was happily, spiritually, naturally alive. Suddenly it was crippled in the middle of a road, bewildered, afraid and vulnerable. Half an hour later it was dead.

It broke my heart to see what I saw and to know what I know.

I try to be realistic and not idealistic but I cannot keep from coming back to the solution that mankind sucks. That we have upset the natural order of things and will one day pay for that.

Whenever that bill comes do, we deserve whatever consequence results.