Many years ago I held a pet parakeet in my hands as it died. I was blessed with parents that allowed me to have pets. A lot of pets. I had dozens of dish, quail, rabbits, a cat, many parakeets, a cockatiel, frogs, geckos, hamsters, spiders, caterpillars and brine shrimp. I also frequently would babysit the neighborhood pets while the owners traveled here and there. Unfortunately the inevitable cost of having short lived animals as pets is that eventually they go away. Well, since none of those animals are in my life now they had to go somewhere. Some were given away, some escaped, but many of them just lived their lives and eventually gave them up.
Moroni, My pet brine shrimp of 5 years. He lived in this glass sphere that whole time, completely sealed off to the outside world.
I was distraught when the hamster died. Being 11 or 12 it was pretty heart rending. I had wanted one for a long time and it just didn’t seem to live very long. I had seen fish come and go but there was something so much more personal about a hamster. It was a teary weekend. My bedroom aviary peaked at 6 birds then they too started to feel their age. I started to find them lying among the shredded newspaper in the bottom of the cages with feet outstretched. My once lively and flighty friends became stiff and cold. How different a bird feels when there is no source of heat to warm the feathers.
The annual duck migration would severely reduce the goldfish population of the backyard pond. The rabbits successfully bred a number of times but never figured out how to raise the little bunnies to adulthood. Even when we pulled the helpless pink hairless figures into the house and gave them the thickest milk we could find they soon returned to wherever it is bunnies come from. I found the little white parakeet still living in the bottom of the cage, feet stretched out in the familiar lifeless way but the little chest still beating with each gasping breath. I tried to warm it with my hands but could do nothing as the breathing slowed to a stop. I had to grow harder. The tears were no longer allowed to flow where others could see me. It isn’t that I learned to deal with death, I just learned to avoid considering it. I went to the funeral of a great aunt who I barely knew. I could see the signs of lifelessness I was familiar with and determined that here was a husk of someone who once was. People were sad but there was great peace in their sadness. She had lived a long good life and death seemed a good way to conclude it.
I was walking a dog, a neighbor’s dog that I spent a great deal of time with, when I let the leash go and let the dog run about a large empty field and through the trees that surrounded it. I did this often and had no fear of losing the dog for the field was fenced. The dog found the scent of a skunk and succeeded in following it right to the tail. I brought home a very smelly dog. I thought it would pass quickly but a few days later the dog wasn’t eating, its joints were swollen, and it could barely walk. A visit to the vet and an x-ray revealed cancer had taken a great hold inside the dog. The skunk had just triggered the influence of months of slowly spreading death. I held Penny as the vet gave her one shot to induce sleep, then another to prevent awakening.
Years have passed since then. I’ve stumbled on deer carcasses and road kill across the country. I’ve been to funerals of close relatives and near strangers. I’ve killed a billion mosquitoes and flies in self-defense and countless aquatic insects in the name of science. I’ve run over birds, and slaughtered pigs. As a missionary I watched baby birds fall from their nests and dry out in the sun.
I became an ecologist. I studied the life cycles and population dynamics of species. I studied Malthus and read of Richard Dawkins rave on the dangers of over population. I began to step back even further. Death is essential to life. The mussel dies so that the star fish can live. The rabbits I buried deep in the soil of the garden soon turned into next year’s carrots. Mortality produced healthier populations in the future and prevented life from starving itself. Death is part of life. Life cannot exist without it.
Today I held in my bare hand a Dawson’s sun star. The mildly uncommon animal was collected last month in the tide pools of Oregon. It’s a special predator that eats everything, including other sun stars. With 12 legs it would be terrifying if it weren’t so slow moving. This sun star has not done well since we took it from the sea. The aquarium we placed it in experienced a spike in ammonium from the new additions and suffered a drop in oxygen. Another starfish died a few days ago in a mess of arms and eggs dissolving in the water. This one hasn’t moved in a few days. I flipped it over and stared at the complex patterns of tube feet that make this animal a predator of all and the prey of none. Not a single one moved. I slid the body into a zip lock bag and held it a minute. It was an easy thing to move the arms this way or that. It was limp. I held it there and felt the bag shift in my hand. Was the sun star trying to assert its continuing presence in this world? Even if it were alive, a biology grad student observed, it wouldn’t be for long. I place the beautiful red animal into the freezer. Perhaps I was signing the death certificate of a fabulous creature. Maybe I was signing the death warrant.
The Professor holding the Solaster dawsonii that we took back to Utah with us.
In any case life goes on in spite of death, or because of death. My turn will come. Perhaps I will watch other creatures die before my day arrives. I may watch friends, or parents, or siblings or spouses or children go before that day. My day will come and I will make the journey that I’ve seen so many take before me. I’ll cross whatever veil blocks the light and see on the other side all those who went before. The insects demanding to know what became of their bodies, the parakeet assuring me that it was her time, the rabbits who ultimately blame their parents, the dog ready to run through the pasture once more, and a sun star, perhaps still a little bitter about being taken from the sea, wanting to know why he died in a dusty Utah basement. I suspect their questions will be more curiosity than anger. They knew that death would come one day as I do. I suspect they will be more interested in knowing what purpose their life, and death, served. With what shall I answer them?
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