It's been a week of rescues. By rescues - sort of attempted rescues. One incident involved finding a baby bird, tangled up in a bramble. I picked it up, it pecked me, I let it go. Not the most dramatic story but on letting it go, the bird had a two minute episode of stressed collapse upon which I felt very guilty for not giving it more of a chance to free itself.

 

Thankfully, it recovered, hopped off and it even got a goodbye lick from Leuwen, my ridgeback.

 

Today's drama was a bit different. I caused a minor traffic jam on a major road and spent sometime scrabbling about trying to catch an injured animal. 

 

Everyone was annoyed but correctly assumed it must be a critical emergency if a vet is blocking both lanes of the road with a huge Landrover defender. Many of them were probably anticipating flashing blue lights to come screaming along at any moment.

 

Had they done so, I probably would have been arrested. I doubt momentarily closing down a two lane highway in order to catch a blind baby rabbit is actually allowed due to various risks involved, but I figured as long as no one saw the creature I was chasing about, they might think it was an old ladies cat  or something and I might just get away with it.

 

I'm not immune to the looks of despair this sort of action can generally evoke, particularly from farmers who happen to be clients of the practice and would simply have mowed it down, but as soon as I braked, I was committed and so red faced and moderately apprehensive there might be a pile up behind me, I stopped and got out. 

 

Driving home, I agonised over which story to tell Noah, my three and a half year old son, who generally seems to be a lot more practical than me about dealing with day to day situations. 

 

"Daddy, did you help any sick animals today?"

 

"Absolutely, son. That's the name of the game. I saw a sick baby rabbit in the middle of the road, stopped the landrover, caused a situation, picked up the rabbit and took it back to the surgery."

 

"Why?"

 

"It was sick, blind, very thin and had a disease called myxomatosis - it was having a bad day."

 

"That's not good."

 

"Sadly, it's something rabbits suffer from, caused by a pox virus carried by fleas - it's a really nasty disease."

 

"How did you help it?"

 

Momentary pause, the dawning realisation that the conversation was rapidly going to put me in deep water. 

 

"Well, I helped it go to sleep"

 

"Was it tired?"

 

"Very tired."

 

"How long did it sleep for?"

 

"Well, it's complicated but basically it needed to go to sleep and it won't wake up."

 

"Never?"

 

"No, sadly not - but it is happier asleep than stuck in the middle of the road with a horrible disease. It was dying. It was going to get run over."

 

"So you didn't make it better?"

 

"No, but I put it out of it's misery?"

 

"You stopped it being run over so you could put it to sleep?"

 

"Technically, yes," I said.

 

Noah looked at me, 

 

"But running it over would have killed it wouldn't it Daddy?"

 

"Yes, that's true"

 

"But you killed it Daddy?"

 

"Yes, I killed it, but in a nice way."

 

"A nicer way than being run over?"

 

Another pause, difficult - instant death being run over by a tonne of landrover, weighed up against the stress of chasing it about, driving it back to the practice, injecting it with lethal drug and letting it slowly go to sleep in an unfamiliar environment.

 

"I like to think so," I said, a touch unconvincingly.

 

My phone rang - saving me. Maybe I should have been a farmer, either way, next time I'm going with the bird story.