Duality of a Kind Gesture
It’s a sunny August day. I’m sitting on the steps of the staircase leading into the backyard, waiting for my dog to finish doing her business. It’s peaceful. The peace is disturbed by a hawk swooping into my field of view. My first thought is one of wonder, at seeing a hawk in the backyard our urban home. Then it becomes clear, why I have been graced with the chance to see this bird of prey. The hawk flies in and snatches a young rabbit from the yard, no more than twenty feet in front of me, it happens in an instant.
I wasn’t the only one to notice the hawk though. My dog, Mya, also sees the hawk when it flies into the yard. As the hawk swoops in for its kill, Mya charges at the hawk. Her furious barking seems to catch the hawk off guard, and the winged predator drops its prey. Seeing that she no longer has a chance to catch the hawk, Mya turns her attention to the squealing rabbit. Before I have a chance to react, the rabbit finds itself in its second life threatening situation of the afternoon. Mya snatches the rabbit, delivers a bite, and drops it back to the ground. I’m on my feet now and am yelling at Mya to stop. She hears me and backs off reluctantly. I grab Mya and take her back into the house.
Quickly I empty a cardboard box that was full of Christmas decorations, grab a handful of paper towels and run back outside. The rabbit is lying on its side and has stopped squealing, but as I get closer I can see it’s still breathing. I gather him up with the paper towels and put him into the box. With Mya inside, I have a chance to inspect the rabbit’s wounds. It’s bleeding from his nose, its left forelimb is cut badly, and it seems to be having trouble breathing. None of its wounds seem to be life threatening, so I decide to take the rabbit inside and tend to the cut on its leg.
Once inside, I grab a cotton ball to put hydrogen peroxide on the cut. Before I dab it on the wound I can’t help but wonder to myself, “How much pain is this going to cause?” Deciding it was worth it for the antiseptic benefits, I apply the peroxide to the cut. The rabbit flails mildly at first, but then surrenders after a moment. I put Neosporin on the cut and wrap it with gauze and medical tape. The rabbit seems fine for the moment, so I walk to the sink to wash my hands.
Coming back to the box, I glance in on my patient. A panic rolls through me as I realize the rabbit isn’t breathing. Instantly my mind shoots to something I had read a few months back. The way a rabbit’s lungs work is connected to the way they run, their legs working like billows for their lungs, pumped by the motion of their sprint. So I start pumping its hind legs in a running motion, trying to will the rabbit back to life.
After moments that seemed like a millennia, the rabbit takes a deep gasping breath. I roll it back onto its stomach; relief falls over me as I see the rabbit’s chest expand in a slow rhythmic fashion. I can’t take my eyes off of it; I have to make sure it doesn’t stop breathing again. I watch the rabbit for as long as I can before I have to leave for work. Before I get into my work clothes, I tear up an old sheet that was already bound for the garbage and make a soft place for the rabbit to lie. I go to the kitchen to find a Styrofoam cup and cut the bottom off to make a water dish. Then I get a few pieces of lettuce to give it something to eat, just in case it feels up to it while I’m away. After checking one last time to make sure it was still breathing, I left for work.
While at work, I decided to name the furry little guy Bunny Liston, after the boxer Sonny Liston. A man known for being sprawled out on the ground, much in the way I found this rabbit. I decide to forego getting lunch during my break in order to go home and check on Mr. Liston. I open the door to my house; stroll through the living room and into the dining room. I had put the box on the table, high enough so Mya couldn’t mess with it. Looking into it, expecting to maybe see some signs of life, my heart sinks. Bunny Liston is down and out. Lying on his side, his chest isn’t rising. I reach in and pick him up. In my hands his body is still and lifeless.
I wrap up Bunny in the sheet I had used for his bed and go to the back yard. I don’t have a shovel or a trowel, so I find a stick. Tearing at the earth with the stick like a prehistoric man, I dig a grave for Bunny. I put the sheet casket into the ground, and cover it up with the loose earth. For reasons I cannot explain, I felt the need to apologize, to let him know I was sorry I couldn’t save him, that I had done my best. I say these things to the plot of freshly tilled dirt, walk inside, wash my hands, and head back to work.
After I get back to work I can’t stop thinking about whether or not I could have done anything else to save the rabbit. I replay everything I did in my mind. I really felt as though I had done everything I could, shy of staying home from work to keep watching over it. Suddenly a new thought came to my mind. What was the rabbit’s perspective? What did the rabbit think of me? To it, I must appear as a god. Though I was trying to help the rabbit by immobilizing its leg and putting peroxide on its wounds, all it knew was pain, as though it were being tortured. So even though I was trying to do good, from the rabbit’s perspective, it would seem I was doing evil.
Another thing that occurred to me, by keeping the rabbit alive as long as I did, as opposed to letting Mya finish the job outside, I made the rabbit suffer longer than it would have otherwise. I caused the rabbit to endure hours of pain instead of mere moments. Also suffering in an alien environment, the inside of a cardboard box, instead of its last moments being outside in the grass where it was at home. I couldn’t help but think, everything would have been better if I hadn’t intervened at all.
Then I thought, but what if the rabbit would have lived? Would it have been ok then? Would I feel guilty for causing all the pain and confusion for the rabbit if I had saved its life? I don’t imagine I would. So does just the fact I tried saving the rabbit make all the extra suffering okay? I suppose so, because if I had saved the rabbit it would have been okay, right?
This eases my guilt for but a moment, before a new hypothetical situation adds weight to my burden. Imagine I did save the rabbit and nourish it back to health. What happens then? Do I keep the rabbit? If so the rest of the rabbit’s life would be spent in a cage, a far cry from the freedom and open space that it was born in. If kept the rabbit long enough for it to heal, odds are if I were to let it back into the outdoors, it would have a hard time surviving on its own anyway. Due to the fact it was just a baby. So even if I were to save the rabbit, It would be doomed to live a life of lesser quality.
So what was truly the right thing to do, to help the rabbit, or let it die quickly? The answer is, I don’t know. From my perspective, at the time, I was doing the right thing. From the rabbit’s perspective, I was a torturous god. Because I failed, I caused the rabbit additional suffering. If I had succeeded, I would have caused the rabbit to live a diminished life, thereby causing more suffering. Would the kindest act of all would have been to have done nothing? To just to let the rabbit die at the hands of nature? I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer, but I’ll always wonder about the question.