{"id":2548,"date":"2019-10-14T07:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T11:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2548"},"modified":"2019-10-14T21:49:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T01:49:03","slug":"lost-my-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/lost-my-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost my Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>My father was the one who taught me to love animals. For years, he had a wild squirrel he named Oscar that he trained to eat peanuts from our hands. He had an old drooling boxer dog who was my big brother the first years of my life. Animals were as important as people were to me. As an adult, I made animal designs for tee shirts, and coined the slogan \u201cCreatures of Earth Unite for Survival.\u201d I would cry copiously anytime I saw commercials showing neglected or abused animals. And whenever my son brought out his shotgun, I\u2019d stomp and shriek a ruckus to scare away his targets, yelling, \u201cNot the bunnies, not the birds….\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But something changed. Somewhere along the years, I lost my empathy. For animals, anyway. Maybe now that my daughter died it’s difficult to recognize the preciousness of a wild critter\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week the visiting wildlife control operator confirmed that my house has squirrels, mice, chipmunks, woodchucks, raccoons, ground bees, cluster flies, and more. This was fine for outside. But they\u2019ve been nibbling their way into my home. And into my humaneness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The operator reminded me of all the reasons I didn\u2019t want to live with wild creatures. The potential fire hazard of gnawed wires, Lyme disease, chew-holes in the stucco and trim, destroyed belongings…. We would start with the squirrels. We\u2019ll eliminate them from the house, he said, informing me that once squirrels move into a place they\u2019re not likely to move out. I suddenly remembered that squirrels were my son\u2019s old girlfriend\u2019s favorite animal.<\/span><\/p>\n

The operator was listing all the options and processes he intended to employ. Video-taping, trapping, removal, … euthanizing. I squirmed, and scratched at my underarms, thinking of all the creeping, the chewing on electrical wiring and insulation, the dropping of turds. The twitchy-thing squirrels do with their tails that probably shakes out whatever fleas and ticks they\u2019re carrying. Squirrels scuffled between floor joists, sounding like a herd of greyhounds racing overhead, through the house, north and south.<\/span><\/p>\n

My father would have said, Poor squirrels\u2014they\u2019re just trying to make a living too.<\/span><\/p>\n

The operator squinted, pointing at a hole in the house\u2019s exterior. You might have some Flying Squirrels here, he said. And the thought of squirrels flying in my house put me over the top of my tolerance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay. I\u2019m in. How fast can you euthanize them? I gulped.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t Rocky, of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a flying squirrel? What destroys your empathy?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father was the one who taught me to love animals. For years, he had a wild squirrel he named Oscar that he trained to eat peanuts from our hands. He had an old drooling boxer dog who was my big brother the first years of my life. Animals were as important as people were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758],"tags":[1396,562,1234,1971],"class_list":["post-2548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1758","tag-animal-lover","tag-hanging-on-to-grief","tag-life-is-precious","tag-lost-my-empathy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}