(no subject)
Feb. 20th, 2012 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pacificpikachuRaccoon got the wood duck last night. That raccoon has caused me so much heartbreak and frustration! He's a bold one, as the wood duck was only about fifty feet from the house. I can't believe the dogs didn't have a fit about it, especially because Hana was in mom's room, which is right next to where it happened.
Of course I feel terrible, but I just keep reminding myself that this is exactly what would have happened to him in the wild sooner or later. The thing with wildlife rehab is that you have to take a different attitude than caring for domestic animals. My wildlife rehab mentor used to tell me, "The animals are (in a sense) dead when they come to you. If something happens to them in your care, they are simply going back to the status they had if you had never cared for them." That makes sense to me, because in almost all cases if the animals were not brought into rehab, they would be dead. It sounds callous, but the death rate is so high with rehabbing that if you don't think like that, you just burn out. You can't blame yourself for every fluke and tragedy that happens, or you'll lose it.
(Of course, in this case I do blame myself--if the pen had been better protected... But I'm not going to be too heartbroken about it, because the duck was never going to get better, and in a way the real reason he's dead is the hunter who shot him in the first place. This is just the natural outcome, though it happened in an unnatural situation.)
Just have to vent about these things. No matter how hard I try, of course I'm going to feel sad when things like this happen. I'd be worried if I did not feel sad any more at these things, because then I'd know I was becoming desensitized. It would be good for me to be a little tougher in some respects, but being desensitized would be terrible for me, as I think my sensitivity, especially for animals, is one of most important aspects of who I am.
Anyway, a harsh reminder to keep trying to get a bunch of hardware cloth. If only it wasn't so damn expensive, ugh!
Of course I feel terrible, but I just keep reminding myself that this is exactly what would have happened to him in the wild sooner or later. The thing with wildlife rehab is that you have to take a different attitude than caring for domestic animals. My wildlife rehab mentor used to tell me, "The animals are (in a sense) dead when they come to you. If something happens to them in your care, they are simply going back to the status they had if you had never cared for them." That makes sense to me, because in almost all cases if the animals were not brought into rehab, they would be dead. It sounds callous, but the death rate is so high with rehabbing that if you don't think like that, you just burn out. You can't blame yourself for every fluke and tragedy that happens, or you'll lose it.
(Of course, in this case I do blame myself--if the pen had been better protected... But I'm not going to be too heartbroken about it, because the duck was never going to get better, and in a way the real reason he's dead is the hunter who shot him in the first place. This is just the natural outcome, though it happened in an unnatural situation.)
Just have to vent about these things. No matter how hard I try, of course I'm going to feel sad when things like this happen. I'd be worried if I did not feel sad any more at these things, because then I'd know I was becoming desensitized. It would be good for me to be a little tougher in some respects, but being desensitized would be terrible for me, as I think my sensitivity, especially for animals, is one of most important aspects of who I am.
Anyway, a harsh reminder to keep trying to get a bunch of hardware cloth. If only it wasn't so damn expensive, ugh!
