![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.riley.rackliffe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/100_5514.jpg\" "\\"100_5514\\"")
<\/a>Moroni, My pet brine shrimp of 5 years. He lived in this glass sphere that whole time, completely sealed off to the outside world.<\/p><\/div>\n
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\u2019t 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I had to grow harder. The tears were no longer allowed to flow where others could see me. It isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
I was walking a dog, a neighbor\u2019s 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.\u00a0 I thought it would pass quickly but a few days later the dog wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Years have passed since then. I\u2019ve stumbled on deer carcasses and road kill across the country. I\u2019ve been to funerals of close relatives and near strangers. I\u2019ve killed a billion mosquitoes and flies in self-defense and countless aquatic insects in the name of science. I\u2019ve run over birds, and slaughtered pigs. As a missionary I watched baby birds fall from their nests and dry out in the sun.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s carrots. Mortality produced healthier populations in the future and prevented life from starving itself. Death is part of life. Life cannot exist without it.<\/p>\n