April 2008 - neighbor driving past a farm near us noticed something jump in front of her car. She couldn’t stop in time, and didn't see anything behind her so she kept on driving until arriving on our street, where another neighbor noticed a rabbit stuck in the car’s front grill.
Our neighbors know that Bil is available to help anyone day or night. He will figure out why your furnace won’t turn on and turn it on, why your water won’t turn off and turn it off, why your car won’t start and how to start it. If your dog is having seizures or foaming at the mouth, he’ll help you find the way to the vet. This neighbor came over asking Bil to help her remove the rabbit from the car grill. They gently extricated the little stunned rabbit, brought it to our house and put it a dark room, then called for assistance from wildlife rehabilitators in the area. The bunny was undamaged except for dragging its back leg.
For some people a rabbit is a food animal. Neither of us would consider eating this rabbit. Possibly since it was a holiday weekend, the rehabilitators we called were not available, and a third so we kept him in a seven foot long homemade cage in a bedroom, which was a shelf four feet up on the wall, 24” deep by 28” high that had been recently used and vacated by a-feral cat Tiger who is no longer feral and has the run of the house. The shelf front was a cannibalized animal cage; the back was the room’s wall, which contained a screened window, the floor was leftover ceramic tile from our living room. This is a heavy-duty shelf - our cats today that perch on it so they have a view out the window and a breeze in nice weather use it. We put the rabbit there to protect it from our cats who weren’t really interested in it but we didn’t trust them. Inside was a cotton covered foam cube used previously for cats that it could hide in, which it mostly did for the first few days. We hoped its leg would become less limp but it didn't change appreciably. He recuperated for several weeks and ate domestic rabbit food, grass, dandelions, and chickweed from our front lawn but then appeared restless and began exercised its legs including the injured one by running from one end of the cage to the other. Most of the night, finally, it hopped around exercising its legs. The injured leg wasn't quite right but when he gnawed a hole in the window screen we knew he was not happy to be here. We were just about ready to take him back to the farm area at the time we got the ironing board (see Ironing Board Nellie).
The events surrounding the efforts to speak to a man that knew about rabbits changed my awareness of human personality. Here was a man who was known by his neighbors as a nice person. No one would dream of invading his privacy, least of all Bil and me. That there were extenuating circumstances that led to the discovery of the animals suffering in the sheds on his property is no excuse – the end result was that we did invade it and were on his property uninvited. We didn’t think about it then but I know now that in our efforts to get water for the little cat, we were trespassing. The contradiction involved echoes that of the rescuers of animals in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas where property rights were violated to prevent more suffering (see the DVD Rising Waters about this). At the time we sought water for Nellie, I didn’t see that technically it was breaking the law to be on this man’s property and yet, what was the right thing to do? It made me ashamed to be so afraid of the letter of the law. I’m thinking it's shameful to be afraid to help animals suffering because it’s against the law to trespass on someone’s property. I am in the class of the majority of human beings on this planet –in the same category of the citizens of Germany when they were unwilling to look more deeply into the actions of their police during the Nazi purges. This happens all over the world, where citizens follow generally accepted standards of civilized behavior. We give up the freedoms of the natural man to partake of the benefits of society, which are great and contain the safety to live relatively carefree lives. We’re willing to be controlled in our activities in return for this freedom and in return, we dare not walk outside the boundary lines of the Law.
I can’t tell you the times I’ve thought disparaging things about nosy people. Now in this instance I’ve become a nosy, interfering neighbor.
In my mind, the right to privacy ends when there is suffering involved. Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, there was suffering here. Our contact with the man who had domestic rabbits caused a paradigm shift for me, threatening my ideals of laissez faire: that a man's home is his castle and he deserves unfettered use of his own property. Bil didn't talk to him much about rabbits when they finally met.. The man was a collector of domestic breeds rather than wild rabbits (Is a rabbit a rabbit? We thought so). Collector was the operative word. He did not appear to appreciate an individual rabbit as a living and feeling creature, rather the status attached to the rarity or value of the animal. The issue for us was the suffering of the animals on this man's property, which are by extension his property as well. How humans own and have absolute right over these animals! They’re free to do whatever they see fit, which is frightening because not everyone is aware or concerned about the possible suffering of said animals.
Bil asked again and again every day that week if he could assist him to ventilate the sheds with the other animals. It had been in the 90s and humid all week, and the sheds were hot. All week long Bil pestered him or went over there to try to convince him to just let Bil help him. The man was not welcoming help - in fact he out-right refused it. Bil was upset and finally called the Animal Control officer and informed her of the animals at risk from the high temperatures. It moved from our hands and into those of the animal police, where it remains today.
The ethics involved in reporting someone for neglect demand that we’d already done all we could do. In this case we had.
wheels
15 years ago
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