all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Saturday, January 10, 2009  np: The Rosebuds - "Nice Fox"So, the second of my fearsome twosome has gone to join the first. Earlier this week I noticed that Potter wasn't being his usual don't-touch-me-ever,-stupid-human self. Neither was he eating or drinking very much. I noticed that he seemed to have an infection in one of his ears. So I took him inside to try and clean some of it out. The mere fact that I was able to touch and attempt to clean his ears without him running away, biting or clawing me should attest to how sick he was. I decided I needed to take him to the vet the next day after school. I took him outside in a towel to try and keep him warm in his cage and went to bed. I went to check on him the following morning and found him barely moving at all. He had collapsed in one corner of his cage and was dull-eyed and miserable. I called work to let them know I'd be late (the blessing of first block planning) and took him to the vet. I dropped him off and not long after I reached school, received a call from the doctor. Potter had an ear mite infection and also hypothermia. The doctor guessed that the ear mites had infected his middle ear, knocking him off balance (as it would any creature) and making him not want to eat or drink. Thus, out on an unusually cold Carolina evening, resistance worn down from not eating, he succumbed to hypothermia. They warmed him and gave him fluids throughout the day. That evening, the doctor called to let me know that Potter had responded somewhat, but not really. He said that if the damage had been something that was reversible that they would've seen more reaction from him. So we made the decision to put him to sleep. I gathered him from the vet this morning and laid him to rest beside Usagi in the garden. Now I have an empty hutch and cage in the back yard. I have a supply of rabbit droppings for the spring garden - my last supply. I have an old metal milk container, quarter-full of rabbit food. I have the memories of my beautiful bunnies. I miss them both. The Rosebuds song up at the top is off their latest album Life Like. The song is about a dead fox that they found in their yard, which they gave a burial, singing the song's refrain as they did. It's a beautiful song and something I sang to myself today as I buried Potter. My dad laid lettuce leaves in the hole where we buried him. Not the same as the tulip that I buried Usagi with, but appropriate all the same. I've thought a lot about symbolism, naturally, over the years. All of the things that have remained from my relationship with Charlie have either gone away or transmogrified. The house, so specific a thing from our time, has become wholly mine in the ways I have made it represent me. The rabbits, the pets we bought together, are now both dead and buried in the yard. Even the most recent song I've written, one I'm terribly proud of, by the way, is a reflection of the settling of my thoughts about the relationship. And now, because of recent events, though sad as it is and I wish it hadn't happened, Potter's death is wholly appropriate. Perhaps it's pretentious and egocentric to look into the tea leaves of day-to-day existence and read into them portents of your own life. But much in the same way that there is comfort in believing the human race to be the chosen life form of an omniscient and omnipotent God, there is comfort in believing that the events of your life make sense in the way that a grand and intertwining novel makes sense. All of them spokes that lead to a central theme and grand ending that is somewhere over the pages of the horizon. posted by J. Neas | 1/10/2009 05:00:00 PM
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