Regret and Racoons

On the mail route the other day, I saw a dead racoon lying on the centerline. I drove by it twice and didn't take the time to move it, and I'm regretting it now. That's the second dead coon I've seen in the past 3 days. The other was lying in the middle of a frozen lake with tire tracks across it's back. Someone apparently thought it would be fun to run it down and kill it. I didn't move that one either (I was to busy wiping its guts off from my dog because he rolled in it), and of course I regret that too. Ever since reading this passage by Dennis Martinez I've tried to move roadkill off the road when time permits.

"The words conservation and ecology, as we use them in the Western sense, don't exactly fit what Indian people did or do with the land. It was their livelihood, which depended on reciprocity. Thus, the trees were not seen as trees, they were also seen as relatives. The trees are relatives and other species are relatives and they watched you all the time. It was a forest that looked at you to see how you were handling the remains of plants and animals.

"An animals shadow soul is alive for a long time after an animal is killed, and it watches how you treat the remains

." [Dennis Martinez, pg. 93 Original Instructions]

Porcupines and Shadow Souls

The words conservation and ecology, as we use them in the Western sense, don't exactly fit what Indian people did or do with the land. It was their livelihood, which depended on reciprocity. Thus, the trees were not seen as trees, they were also seen as relatives. The trees are relatives and other species are relatives and they watched you all the time. It was a forest that looked at you to see how you were handling the remains of plants and animals."

"An animals shadow soul is alive for a long time after an animal is killed, and it watches how you treat the remains. Dennis Martinez, pg. 93 Original Instructions

Ever since reading A Language Older Than Words I have moved close to fifty dead animals off from the roads near my house. The other day was no exception. This time it was the biggest porcupine I had ever seen.

Cory (My sister's husband),Tyler (My nephew) approached it. As we did Cory said, "Oh, that has been lying their since I went to work this morning." Cory has to leave for work well before the sun rises. As we stood there the sun was starting to set.

Looking at it I could see that it's quills were spread down the road roughly 25 feet. One side of its body was scraped clean from being drug underneath a car. It was severely bloated. Flies were swarming around it.

It was going about its day and got in the way of a car and lost its life.

I scooped it up and moved it out of the way of progress. I layed it to rest in a hazelnut thicket and faced it west. Its body will be able to decay and return to the earth with dignity. When the time comes I hope my body is treated the same way.

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It's been months since I wrote that above. Looking back at what I wrote and the experience of moving the porcupine off the road reminds me of something Derrick Jensen said over at his discussion list. He said that in a documentary he was watching about serial killers there was a FBI agent describing that a serial killer has as much consideration for their victims as we do a piece of tissue paper.