Feline Warrior

…Or at least for now:

Part of my drive to and from work is a two-lane road. It’s country - farmland, really. Every now and then I pass a dead deer on the side of the road, which isn’t as upsetting as it once was, but it still makes me sad. (It’s not emotionally paralyzing - that’s what I mean.)

Today on my way home, just about midway from work to the freeway, I saw what appeared to be a dead raccoon in the middle of my lane. You see lots of dead possums and raccoons everywhere, not just the country roads (and probably more on the roads that were country roads not too long ago).

As I approached, I realized that the raccoon, who was on its back, was alive. Its head was moving from side to side and its little arms were reaching up and around frantically. I swerved around it and missed (or I wouldn’t be writing now - I’d be in a freakin’ psych ward on nerve pills or something).

Alive… the damn thing was alive.

I wanted to turn around and pull it from the road. Even though I knew it would die… maybe I thought -in some crazy super-fast thought pattern of an instant- that there would be a raccoon cast and raccoon crutches. The raccoon would come live out its days with me in grateful servitude. Who knows what I was thinking? In that crazy moment I felt its fear and wanted to fix it. (Oh, glory be to dysfunctional families and being the “fixer.”)

I was on the phone with my friend Nurse D (I know, I know, but I had my Bluetooth on) and she told me NOT to go back and pull it from the road. I just didn’t want it to lay waiting for certain death, frightened and unable to move. She told me to forget about saving the raccoon. She grew up in the country, she said, she’s used to things like that, so she didn’t want to upset me more, but these things happen. Me, I’m more at home (still) with a drunk guy leaning on a building asking for fitty-t’ree cent for the bus. I’m a city girl.

Surely by now the raccoon is dead. Dead-dead. But that little head, those furry arms waving frantically to and fro… they’re burned into my memory forever. Or at least for now.