I Have No Answer

The other day, I was running late for work.  It was one of those mornings when you just feel very slow and dull, when you don’t want to do anything at all.  So I was running behind, and I went out to see a mover’s truck blocking my usual exit from the apartment.  Unwilling to wait for the truck to move, I went out the farther exit, only to see that traffic was being held up there, too.  I remember how I groaned; What now? I thought.  And then I saw.

There was a deer in the center of the road, half on, half off its feet.  At first, I couldn’t see why it didn’t just get up and run away, but as it struggled to get onto its front legs, it turned around and I could see that its back legs were both broken.  One of them dragged across the pavement at an impossible angle.

I don’t know how long I sat motionless in my car, watching the poor thing’s futile struggle.  Even when I did drive away, I watched in my rearview mirror, seeing the cars edging round the poor dying thing on their way to work. 

I thought about it on and off all day.  It must have been in so much pain, and so afraid.  There was absolutely nothing I could have done to help it, either to fix what had been done or even to end its misery.  Even if there had been, I’m not sure I would have done it, as it would have involved stopping my car in the middle of a busy intersection.  People are usually not very understanding of that sort of thing.

I don’t know what happened to the deer—by the end of the day, I had forgotten to look for any sign of it by the road, and there was nothing left the following morning.  And honestly, what I want to say about this.  Am I angry at being a species which has come so far from our natures that we pretend this kind of thing doesn’t happen, that we turn our eyes away?  Do I admire the creature that had so much desperation to live that it continued to fight, even at that helpless, hopeless moment?  Or am I simply made sad by the pointlessness of it all?  All of the above, but the last most of all, I think.  I like to believe that there is meaning and significance to life, and I spend a lot of my time looking for it.  But there is nothing I can do to give purpose to a young creature’s lonely suffering and slow death.  Why does this happen?