30 January 2008
Open Gates,
Broken Hearts
--by
Mike Murray
It’s
many a pet owner’s nightmare. You try to do the right thing: You fence your yard (if it isn’t already) before adopting.
The enclosure is secure, the gate sturdy. Still, you worry. All it takes is one careless moment.
And
then it happens. A contractor (or a meter reader, or a child, or a neighbor)
passes from backyard to front – and fails to close the gate behind him or her.
A short while later, your companion animal, a beloved member of your family, wanders out.
Such
slip-ups are often uneventful. Your pet, intrigued by unexpected opportunity,
seizes it. He or she leaps at the chance to explore the outside world –
unfettered by leash or human direction. Perhaps a passing squirrel or rabbit
entices, initiating a spirited chase. In such cases, a domestic animal will usually
meander a while and then return.
But
sometimes he or she does not. Hours pass.
You become anxious.
And
just like that, your life is turned upside down. You call police departments
and local animal shelters. You frantically search the neighborhood, stopping
all you meet to inquire, and to spread the word. You prepare signs and fasten
them to poles and bulletin boards all over town. You take out ads in newspapers. You visit web sites. You post desperate
pleas everywhere.
Most
times, things work out okay. If you’ve secured an ID tag to your pet’s
collar or implanted a microchip under its skin – and the animal hasn’t been snatched by someone with malicious
intent – your telephone will likely ring one day. Happy news from the other
end will elicit joyful noise. If the period of separation has been especially
long, otherwise stoic souls might sob uncontrollably in their relief.
But
other outcomes are also possible. Tears sometimes fall for other reasons. Sad reasons. An animal unused to making
its way through traffic comes to a bad end crossing a busy street. An elderly
or ill animal becomes disoriented, and strays very far from home. It strays beyond,
even, the wide search net cast by its worried human family.
As
uncertainty stretches beyond a few days, stress increases exponentially. Is the
animal alive? Is he or she in severe distress?
Is he cold or hungry? Is she sick or injured? Has the critter been found by someone who doesn’t know that you are searching desperately, that you
ache with each passing hour of deprivation?
Has
your beloved friend been scooped up by an animal-control officer in a town that lacks an extended-stay shelter? Is he or she confined in a public facility, one in which the clock ticks relentlessly? Has your companion wound up in a place where 72 hours are all that separate life from death?
As
the days pass, the odds for a happy outcome diminish. Though you will never give
up hope so long as there is any possibility of reunion, you find your priorities shifting with the growing number of Xs staring
back at you from the crossed-out days on your calendar. As much as you yearn
for the safe return of your precious friend, you desire something else even more: to
know that he or she is not suffering.
Your
love for your companion is supreme. It takes you beyond the fulfillment of your
own desire. Your devotion to your friend is such that it leads you to seek that
which is in his best interest. It is her welfare, not yours, that most concerns
you now.
And
so, as much as you long to reunited – as much as you always will – you pray most for your dear friend’s
safety. Hard as it is for you to imagine your companion living among new family
members, that outcome discomforts far less than the thought of him or her wandering the streets alone – starved and
scared. If your friend cannot return to you, your wish is that a compassionate
stranger has offered loving sanctuary.
Even
death, as awful a result as that is to contemplate, is preferable to some alternatives.
The image of your friend out there somewhere, enduring a painfully untreated (and grievous) injury is just too much
to bear. A merciful end would be preferable to that.
Worst
of all is the uncertainty. As weeks turn into months, you seek closure. You have reached a point where at least knowing what has become of your friend would
offer a small measure of comfort. But you are denied even that.
You
will never forget your loving companion. You hope that he or she never forgets
you. And you hope something else, too:
that others escape the misery you’ve known. Misery that could have
been prevented by one simple act: closing a gate.
Copyright © 2008 Michael F. Murray All
rights reserved.
Postscript: If you know anything about what
became of Annie, lost in the Olmsted Falls area of Northeast Ohio during August of 2007, please call Bob & Tara Stultz
at (440) 225-9595 – day or night.
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