My Dead Cat

My father was an architect, though still unregistered legally at age 60. He taught me everything I know about the best and worst things in life, and that included how to not build a house. These lessons I learned the hard way.

Someday, if I ever finish building this house, on the top step off my back porch, I will place a plaque that will say: This crooked step is dedicated to the Lezarrio Brothers, who lost their lives due to my poor stewardship of the Earth. Don’t ask me about the cat.

When I came home today there was a big splatter of bird shit on my stairs, the stairs inside my house. How does a bird that big manage to get inside my house, take a shit, and get out in the time I’m at work?

A couple of mornings ago I was awoken by a small bird on my nightstand, hopping and chirping. He didn’t seem to notice me, so I remained real still. I was still shaken from my experience with the rabbit and the spider the night before.

Do you know how hard it is to get a bird out of your house? To watch them fly into the windows over and over again while trying to herd them toward the open door, which they have such great difficulty finding for some reason I’ve never understood.

Slowly, my dad once picked up a little bird on a window sill in our living room and walked him out the door and set him free, but he was heavily medicated at the time. My dad that is. I don’t know about the bird.

I’m a little exhausted by these animals who can’t seem to find their way crossing paths with me so often, but little birdies are sweet and I will take the time to help this little fella find his way back to mommy. He must see me by now, I think, as he hops onto the ground and down the stairs out of my sight. I stay in bed for a while and then go downstairs.

It’s silent. I still have a couple of holes to the outside in some of the walls; a corner in the laundry room and one between the steps and the dining table. These will become priorities to close up today, but I can barely see an animal getting in that way, much less getting out.

I pee outside and clean myself with some bottled water before heading off to work.

I hate driving.

Trying to find something on the radio to distract me from watching the road. Oh, God, I hate driving. Trying to not notice all the clear-cut land to make way for some development that nobody wants, being told that the growth is inevitable. Like accepting the nation’s plutonium waste to store across from my mama’s house, we are told “It bring job.”

I don’t know to what imaginary crowd I was addressing this diatribe, when the cutest little bunny in the whole wide world runs out in front of my car.

Two years ago, I nailed a squirrel as I was leaving work. Felt him hit the wheel well and saw him kicking on his back in the rear view. A bird swooped into my grill just a week ago. I love all of God’s little creatures I assure you, but they just keep getting squashed by my carbon footprint.

How do I avoid this bunny? Swerve and I’ll run into him, on the assumption that he knows how to run across a road and not get hurt, timing his hops to strategically overshoot the passing cars outweighing him a million-fold and traveling of speeds upward to fifty miles an hour. Surely, he knows this?

If I hit the brakes, then I’ll cause a pileup. Passing over him, I only pray for the best, but it is not to be as I see him upside down and tumbling in my rear view mirror. I tell God I’m sorry for doing it again. I beg forgiveness, explaining my circumstances and lack of motive.

But I just keep driving down the road. What else can I do?

I didn’t mean to do it. He probably dead, right?

Hoping to at least pay the finance charge on my cosmic debt, and not feeling like God is particularly listening, I take my eyes off the road again and call a friend. I confess to voicemail the horrible accident I have caused and my anguish as if this would make things better.

The bunny is a couple of miles back now, traffic is busy, and what could I do anyway? But I know that’s just not good enough. I turn the car around head back to the scene.

Sure enough, there’s a bunny in the road. A little jack rabbit, I think. He’s sitting up kind of, but in the middle of the road. Cars have been going around him, I guess.

As I park off the side of the road, I envision his back end must be crushed and he can’t carry himself out of the road. What am I going to do? I look for anything to pick him up with. I pop the trunk and look for a shovel. When I know I don’t have a shovel in the trunk.

What am I gonna do for this guy? Problem is I’ve recently cleaned my car and don’t have a bag or anything to scoop him up with. Would I put him in a bag? And then what, take him home? Would I nurse him back to health? Give him a little wheelchair or something? Do I know how to do that?

He doesn’t want to be put in a bag. I’ve got a pair of shorts in the back seat, don’t ask, and I can pick him up with that.

There are cars coming pretty steady in both directions. The rabbit sits in the middle of the road. I don’t see any signs of gore, maybe a little blood around the mouth, but I know I’m pretty shaken up and can’t really believe what I see.

With a break in traffic, I dart out to the middle of the road to scoop this throbbing lump into my shorts and dump it by the side of the road. At least he dies in his own habitat and not in the street. I hate driving.

I get about a foot from him, and he jumps a way. Well, at least he has one leg that works. He hops again. I’m frankly afraid to touch him. I don’t want to scare him or hurt him, which is funny since my two-thousand-pound Honda civic just ran over him. What if he has rabies and bites me? What if he bites me, period? What the hell am I doing?

“Cars are coming, and we have to get out of the road, buddy.” I tell him, but he doesn’t trust my advice. Why should he?

I’m able to corral him into the grass by the side of the road as a minivan comes driving by. The window goes down and the woman asks what I’m doing.

Are you kidding me? Can’t you mind your own damn business?

“Well, I hit this bunny and I thought I’d try to get him out of the road.”

She says something and pulls ahead to park. I’m thinking, lady, let me and this bunny die in peace. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna help this bunny?

The Cavalry has arrived in the form of a mom and her two blond daughters, maybe ten and seven years old. There’s no time for small talk, the feds have arrived. I explain that I thought I ran over him, but he seems to be hopping and I don’t know what to do.

As cars dart past us, she explains that they have rabbits at home, and maybe she could help it if we could catch it. Me and the two girls try to catch the little guy. As he eludes us for a minute, I begin to think maybe he’ll be okay where he is.

But mini-van mom is yelling “Get him by the neck, Megan, Get him by the neck!”

I realize he’s going home with Megan, weather he like it or not, and I considered for a second if he might not be rabbit stew in a couple of hours. The younger sister thought she could show us all, and almost had him.

I didn’t know how to feel. He was panting pretty good and I thought the most ethical thing to do would be to end the chase. I threw my shorts over him and scooped him up. He was so small I could barely feel his weight. We negotiated him into a towel in the back of their van.

They were claiming to have the facilities to fix the bunny, like a little bunny ward, with treadmills and support groups. Maybe a bunny nurse to take his temperature. This will be good for him. I’m starting to feel better about this.

While mom and little sis try to secure him in the giant blanket in the least threatening way, I introduced myself to Megan and thanked her for her help. The girls got belted in with the bunny on Megan’s lap and mom slid the door shut.

I shook her hand and said, “Thanks for being good people.”

They drove off with the bunny and I walked back to my car with my shorts.

Hey, I was shaken. I don’t like hurting or killing animals, and I’d gotten a taste of both. I got home and paced from room to room, upset at what I had done but knowing I had tried my best to right a wrong. Maybe he would get better and they’d set him free, back where we found him. But what side of the road would you put him on? I know he hasn’t learned to not cross the road, but I guess the county is chasing him out of his family home. Try to explain to him about the tax revenue and impact fees.

The mini-van folks and me didn’t exchange numbers or anything, so I guess I’ll never know, but I went home feeling that I’d done what I could. The bunny didn’t bang his head to death or drown saving a loved one because of me.

I realized, in real time for once, that it wasn’t enough to feel bad about what I had done, accident or no, and do something about it. Do what you can. I guess we need to do what we can, whatever the situation calls for.

Do what you can, while you can.

You can’t think back to what you’ve done and imagine what you would have done differently. Life poses too many opportunities to reflect on all of them with could’a, should’a, would’a. It’s hard to save every bunny. It’s a pain in the ass. It takes time out of my day. It takes my time away from me.

I come home to a huge spider, as big as the palm of my hand, sturdy and foreboding, with what looks like wings on his back, walking on my pillow.

“Oh, come on.” I cry out loud. “Are you kidding me?”

Didn’t I help the bunny out of the road? Do I really need to relocate another one of your creatures? This must be a test. How do I pick up a flying tarantula?

“Okay, dude. You’re going outside.” Picking up a t-shirt to trap him in.

“It’s better outside.” I tell him “More opportunities.”

Can he sting me through the fabric? What if he flies away? I throw the shirt over him, scoop him up, and flap the shirt out the door. I hope I got him. I never actually saw a body.

Okay, can I get some sleep now? I still had hours of pacing, thinking about work, this house, and trying to convince myself that Mr. Bunny is in good hands.

Weighing on my mind was another little birdie I found downstairs a couple of weeks ago. I came home to a dead little birdie in my living room area, laying on the floor by the sliding glass doors. I could picture him banging his brain out on the window, over and over, until he finally broke something or was overcome by exhaustion.

I don’t want these beautiful creatures to lose their lives on account of me. I was feeling guilty enough about a dog shark I caught sport fishing at a bachelor party a few days before. I was puking all day on the boat. Not from the waves, but from the case of beer, the hot sake, gin, rum, and Jager I had the night before. Tom Petty kerokie I remember, but not flipping a table or calling that Taiwanese stripper as my friends told me I did; however, I will tell you that there is a human pipeline between Mosow and Myrtle Beach. At the end of this rainbow girls will dance with you for thirty dollars a song, I found out after three songs.

I’d seen, heard, felt, thought, and drank a lot of things to make me sick that day, but watching that little dog shark butchered and flayed on the dock to reveal she was the mother of two was the worst. I was truly sickened.

She fed my family, tasted great blackened on the grill, and the pelicans got all the parts I didn’t take, so I guess I should feel okay that she was recycled through the ecosystem. But it bothered me.

Whenever I’ve thought about how I would want to die, after peacefully in my sleep, or saving kids from a burning building, I’ve always fantasized about getting eaten by a great white shark. Now that’s a way to go that is real, that is natural, pure, and respectable.

So now, after eating Jaws’ pet dog (it is called a dog shark for some reason), I’ve karmacly pissed-off the species and deserve what I get. Such is the apparent price of bachelorhood, but this little birdie was tragic in that she died trying to escape without even being on a hook.

I scooped her up in a dust pan and took her outside. I didn’t know what to do with her. Digging a grave didn’t make sense. I found an overturned tree with a hole where the root ball was turned up. It made a natural memorial awning, protected from the elements but still open to them. I placed her in there and tucked her in with a blanket of leaves.

I apologized to God for taking another of his beautiful creatures. I apologized for killing the shark. I knew then and there, listening to my heart, I didn’t want to kill any more of his creatures. I said such, out loud, over the makeshift grave of this little bird.

I don’t want another cow to be slaughtered for my Big Mac.

I don’t want to step on another bug.

But I know these are false promises, so what the hell am I really praying for here anyway? Have I got something to say? Am I just bitching about the same old stuff? Pretending to be upset at the injustice and misery in the world, when I don’t really give a shit.

What, you gonna do something about it? I don’t want anything else to die because of me, but what kind of promise is that? All I can really say is I’ll be more careful in the future, but that’s before I ran over the bunny. The bird had a classy resting place and some final words. Standards have been set.

I thought this was adequate and appropriate, which brings me, finally, to the tragedy and triumph of the Lizarrio Brothers, but I hear something scratching. Got to go.

Don’t even get me started on the cat.