WHERE THE ROAD KILL RESTS

 

"I may tell myself at the time that I do this for my husband, but really... I do it for me."  

These are words I told my friend of forty years when I shared the following story with her.  

* * * 

Let's back up to yesterday.  My husband and I were driving home from a short road trip, and as we were turning off the highway to our street, my husband noticed first what I noticed right after him.  A rabbit had met its end on the highway right in front of our house.  This was a fresh kill.  It rattled us both.  

We have a family of critters that spend time in our yard. We have birds, squirrels and a couple of bunnies.  They come and they go, but we have gotten attached their presence.  Yesterday morning, the first thought that came into my head, and probably "Mr Bunny!"  

There was no way of knowing what rabbit had been run over.  But it didn't matter at the time.  I told my husband I would take care of it.  Because I took care of the last one. 

It was last year when we "lost" another member of our furry community.  A squirrel was hit on the street across from our driveway.  I needed to do something as we both thought it was Squishy, our friendly squirrel who lived in our tree and had learned to eat peanuts from our hand.  My husband and I  had gotten very attached to Squishy.  

I had disposed of a bird that died in my yard once and didn't feel good for a week after, because I didn't give it a dignified farewell.  So this time, I wanted to bury "Squishy".  We have a Saskatoon patch in our yard that has become quite the bush.  There is a little path into the centre of the patch.  I took the squirrel and buried him in the middle of my Saskatoons.  I cut down a limb from our maple tree and carved "Squishy" in the wood.  I stuck the marker in the ground where I buried the squirrel.  

It was a while later when "Squishy" reemerged in our yard, and my husband and I both concluded that our friend was not the same squirrel that was buried in my berry patch.  But I am still glad I gave the little guy a memorable resting place.   

So yesterday, it didn't take me long to decide that I needed to find another place to bury the bunny.  Something in me needed to put some extra effort into this burial.  My lilacs were just starting to lose their purple beauty and some of my peonies were on the tail end of their blooming, so I gathered some blossoms into a bucket.  I emptied half of the pail into the hole I had dug.  Then the rabbit went in, and I topped up the hole with the remaining flowers, before putting the dirt back on top.  I went back to my peony patch and harvested some more blossoms and laid them on top of the grave.  

I found a branch in the Saskatoon patch that was the perfect size for a marker, and I carved the word "HASE" into it.  Hase is the German word for Rabbit. Another nickname we had for our bunny was Herr Hase.. (Mr Bunny).   Across the highway is some bush land that has Alberta wild roses in fresh bloom.  I harvested a sprig of one of the rose bushes and stuck it in the grave.   

I didn't even make it back in the house, when two rabbits showed up on our neighbour's yard and one of them ventured across the street into our front yard, passing by the Saskatoon patch.  I called to my husband through the window that we had company.  The sight of two bunnies gave us both a calming feeling, that maybe our bunnies that we had become so fond of were still alive.  I imagined that two bunnies had come to pay their respects to their friend or family member. 

I don't know all the details.  There are so many rabbits in our town and we don't have name tags affixed to them.  But it really didn't matter to us which rabbit or which squirrel died.  They were a reminder how fragile life is for us and for the critters that give us joy.  The tears shed for these little bundles of fur were not wasted even if they weren't the critters that frequented our yard.  

My little burial ceremonies also helped me process a painful experience of cleaning the road of their remains.  I am not that tough inside, but the other option is not doing something and that is worse.  So I have created a little resting place for the road kill.  They may have met an untimely end because they were in the wrong place at the right time, but I want them to still matter.  They were life, they were breath, they were part of our world and now... they are a part of the Flow.  

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."  —  A. A. Milne