PARTING SHOT

The day before the early March ice storm-the bad one-I set out around nightfall for a walk, figuring we’d probably be socked in by the weather for a few days. Two lumpy shadows were crouched near the end of the driveway, and when I got closer, one of them turned out to be a black cat and the other a pigeon, sitting with their heads together as if they were old friends catching up on gossip. The cat fled as I approached, but his intended victim didn’t move. Perhaps it was already dead? But no: when I bent to pick it up, the bird went pinwheeling wildly across the driveway, flapping one wing while the other hung like a limp flag on a still day.

Back in the light of the garage I did a crude examination (as if I knew something about birds) and concluded that the wing was indeed broken. Despite that, the bird was definitely alive; its heart beat like a tiny triphammer, and when I loosened my grip for a moment it went twisting out of my hands, bouncing and flopping on the concrete like a child’s windup airplane out of control. It seemed unable to stand up. Remembering the cat, I put the bird inside an old styrofoam ice chest and went inside to think.

What I needed was some help, and naturally it was after five on a Friday. I called several pet hospitals and vets, but the only one who worked with wild animals was way out in North Dallas. Of course they would want to be paid, and of course nothing like this could be guaranteed: wild things don’t take kindly to slings and casts. Suddenly this humanitarianism was starting to seem like a lot of trouble.

When I came back the wind had swung around to the north and the garage was much colder. I noticed the bird was not moving, so 1 took him out and put him on the hood of the car. Still no movement, and when 1 touched him he seemed much cooler, as if some of his body heat had drained into the cool metal of the car. Setting him back in the chest. I went out to cover some plants and shrubs against the storm. With snow, sleet, and sixteen degrees on the way, putting him out now seemed too cruel. If he couldn’t walk he couldn’t find food, and without flight he was easy prey for local carnivores. What kept coming to mind-and the chief reason I didn’t just put the bird out in the yard or down in the creek-was the image of him lying there, helpless, as the teeth and claws sank in, perhaps still conscious when the first bites were taken.

The scientists call this anthropomorphism-projecting human thoughts and fears onto animals-and it’s usually considered a soft-minded mistake to behave as if the rest of nature shares our feelings. Just the day before I had heard a biologist confidently announce, on the radio, that dying animals feel no pain because of some magical enzyme or hormone that takes over. But how could he be sure? Anyway, I’m enough of an evolutionist to believe that everything we find in ourselves must have roots or analogues in other, “lower” beings. Some form of self-consciousness, some dim sense of “I” might exist in the bird. So I decided to keep him in the garage overnight and give him some bread and water. If he died (as, I now realized, I hoped he would), I could bury him tomorrow and feel I’d done my part.

During the night snow and ice painted the yard a frigid white, but the bird was still alive in the morning. I couldn’t tell if he had drunk the water or spilled it, but the bread was untouched. He had begun to foul his styrofoam nest, and his feathers had taken on a matted, unhealthy sheen. As he eyed me with what I was sure was suspicion, my rescue mission seemed foolish, even wrong. He couldn’t stay here-but Nature, red in tooth and claw, had no place for the weak and injured. For the first time it dawned on me that I might have to do away with the bird myself, “put him out of his misery” like they so quickly do with horses in Western movies. But a horse is a large mammal who loudly proclaims its pain, and a horse with a broken leg is no good for moving people around. This bird suffered (if it was suffering) in silence. And what are birds for, anyway?

Perhaps because I am not formally religious. I am fascinated by the resurgence of interest in ethics-television shows on ethics, the popularity of ethics “czars” and experts, the endless attempts by our politicians to legislate us (and sometimes themselves) into goodness. I guess I’m looking for tips on what to do. But I couldn’t find the ethical thread in this labyrinth. If the bird gained a few more days of life before he lost his strength and died, was that good? Or would the cat’s quicker, cleaner way have been right?

Answers sometimes come in dreams, but by the next morning I was no wiser than before. The bird, having eaten nothing, looked shrunken and defeated; now he didn’t bother to move when I peered in at him. Putting on some old gloves. I took the chest and crunched through the ice to the creek, thinking to leave him there and let what would happen happen. On a very small scale, I had done just what we’ve done with the ozone layer, the forest fires, and the oil spills, tampering with processes far older and more intricate than we can imagine. Now it was time to step out of the picture.

When I put him down he lay still, making no effort to escape. Filthy and bedraggled on the carpet of white, he was the only blot of ugliness in the pristine beauty of the scene. A sound came from the brush, and 1 turned to see a row of raccoon tracks sprinkled across the snow. Then I knew there was one more thing to do. Kneeling beside the bird, I squeezed and twisted his neck until I heard a muffled popping sound. “Please die.” I heard myself say. and with a few more flaps of his good wing he did. I left him in a snowbank at the foot of a cedar tree.

All students of ethics know that happiness and duty don’t always coincide. The right thing may not be the pleasant thing, and good intentions don’t always lead to good results or good feelings afterwards. Maybe that’s why. since that day. I’ve felt that some words should be said, some accounting given. This is it.



THE “ME FOR MAYOR” TURNOUT THIS TIME was light but lively. Here’s a sample: Laura Wilson, running on a morality ticket, says she’s never even taken a puff off a cigarette and has no skeletons in her closet. “I keep everything neatly tucked in drawers, she says. (John Tower, take note.) Claire Put-nicki, “a Bohemian Yankee from Milwaukee,” would straighten out the city by rounding up “intelligent, gutsy” types like Jack Evans, Roger Staubach. and Stanley Marcus. “Give them some hoagies and some brew and let them tell it like it should be.” And S.J. Williams is running because, he says, all Dallas mayors have been like American beers-“heavily watered for blandness and containing too much gas.” He promises to slug nobody and will show double features at City Hall: Mighty Mouse for the kids and The Last Temptation of Christ for adults.