After all of this is gone.

The way I sympathyze with things in nature has always scared me a little. One day back in 1998 at Beavers the group leader was teaching a song to everyone about this goat. At the end of the song, the goat, rather graffically, gets hit and killed by a train. I had to leave the group so I could go sob my eyes out while everyone else sang and laughed.

Since then (and long before) I've always had this strange bond with wildlife. I once had a nervous breakdown when I was 10 while fishing after I thought that the young pike I caught had the brain development and capacity to know it was not only going to die (fully comprehending death) but it would also be sad and scared because it was being taken away from it's pike family.

Even now I can't so much as harm a fly. I won't kill spiders. I had a meeting at city hall in the third grade with the mayor over property development at an abandoned brick factory which had been taken over by wildlife from the neighbouring RBG and essentially was part of the nature reserve. The developper took me on a tour of the property after the diggers had started moving in to show me what they would keep and what would be taken away. He even promised not to cut down a certain oak tree that was apparently over 200 years old (the tree is still there, and sits right behind what is now the home of my oldest friend). He even agreed to excavate a collapsed brick pile cutting off water from a ravine into a part deeper down into the property where trilliums grow.

I was 9 years old.

Even now I spend hours on end each day rescuing refugee bumblebees and ladybugs from inside my back porch and front hallway. I pokes a hole in my bathroom screen when I was 5 with a pencil so a mosquito could escape. I told my mom I didn't know how the screen got ruined.

Earlier tonight while engaged in an indepth phone call lying on my bedroom floor, a tiny (and I mean TINY) beetle came crawling across my hand before taking off into open space and landing somewhere in the dark. 15 minutes ago that beetle startled me by showing up on the inside of my forearm while falling asleep. Not knowing what it was (and out of shear surprise) I immediately flicked it off. It hit the plate for my bananabread next to my bed with what seemed to me like a deafening ring that resonated in my ears.

After seeing that it was my little friend, I immediately panicked and got up to see if it was okay. It appeared that I had damaged it's wing, although it could still use it, it was still shaken up and clearly confused. After helping it off it's back and on to it's feet, I got out of bed, got dressed, got the beetle on the tip of my finger and released him into a batch of tulips out front of my house.

I haven't felt that scared for another animal/insect since my dog got hit by a car when I was 7 years old.

Have you ever seen Into The Wild? You know the scene with the moose? It felt like that.


What the fuck is wrong with me?