July 2025~
When I completed my June newsletter blog on repatriation and Ancestral places, I already had a “follow up” idea for this newsletter, about movement and migration. That idea is going to wait. Having recently returned from visiting the land I wrote about in June, and witnessing the transformation already occurring there where nine acres of native pollinator meadow is just beginning to grow, I have been even more attuned to the magic and movement of the natural world around me. Always a lover of wildlife and still wild spaces, I, like many of us, can get so busy I forget to appreciate the beautiful world that is an extension of us. One of the last things my Mother said to me as she was dying, when sharing what she loved about who I had become, was “The animals. You have always loved the animals and the wild ones. I love how you take care of them now. They are your children.”
Preparation warning: there are some gruesome details in this blog. When we are willing to witness, and to act, we don’t always get to choose what we will see. Four days ago, I witnessed the brutal death of a sweet wild rabbit who found herself trapped in between the four lanes of one of Santa Fe’s busiest roads. The road is near a bike path and a green area, so I can only guess that’s how she got to this precarious and final moment in her life. I have spent 4 days processing what I witnessed so soon after being amongst the flowers and numerous mama and baby bunny families.
I pulled into the parking lot where we buy Colorado peaches and as I was getting my wallet, saw the rabbit in the middle of the road. I did a double take because it’s such an unusual sight. The rabbit was hopping frantically back and forth in the middle of the road, unable to get out because of many fast moving cars. It dodged at least 5 in the few seconds it took me to make sense of this and to act.I quickly tossed my wallet back in the car, grabbed my keys and a rescue kit from my trunk. As I started to step into the road, I looked down for a moment to find the towel I had to cover the bunny, to use as a flag so people would stop. When I looked up, the rabbit was flattened. I froze. A woman in a car that was pulling out into the road had seen it, and she stopped. I heard her gasp a NO. Suddenly the rabbit lifted its head and tried to hop, but its leg was severed, skinless, and its back half smashed, oozing blood and guts. It was an awful, heartbreaking sight. I ran out into the road, stopping all traffic with a force I can only describe as embodied righteous anger. I felt clear strength in every bone of my body. I was putting my hands up to stop traffic and yelling NO. STOP. Over and over. Every car did.
When I got to the rabbit it had tried to stop fleeing and was beginning to quiver, the light rapidly leaking from its eyes. I gathered it, guts and all, and held it close, stroking its forehead and singing until it died. I stayed in the middle of the road, on a median, so we could be still while it died. When I walked back to my car, dead bunny in my arms, the woman in the car was still there, tears on her cheeks, watching. She rolled down her window and said “Thank you. It was so hard to watch that truck swerve to hit the rabbit.” I had not seen that and I felt rage surge in me. “What? Was it intentional?” I asked. She replied that it appeared that way, and that is why she was still sitting there. All she said was “it was so hard to watch it get hit.” I still hope that the pickup truck, which I did see before I looked down, just didn’t see her. I recall it was moving fast and I flinched in fear that it would hit her. Whether or not it was going too fast, the driver not paying attention, or did it intentionally which is unconscionable, I was and am pissed off. None of us has the right to be careless or cruel enough to take another life for no reason.
I placed her in my car, and drove her to a forested area where her body, now lifeless, could nourish another life. The next day, I did the same for another rabbit that had only been dead an hour or so.
I share this because I am still heartbroken and I am still angry. I am sure every single one of us has seen many animal bodies squashed in the road, and kept going. It’s easy to get used to it, and go numb. After studying with Pema Chodron, I began doing “Tonglen on the Spot” for every single dead creature I see. I stop and move them off the road, no matter their condition, when it’s safe enough and possible to do so. I create a “memorial service” in my mind and heart, offering them the respect that every life deserves.
It may seem excessive to honor a single rabbit in this way. It’s not. One of the ways I teach Polyvagal-informed somatics is to remind people that our autonomic nervous systems (“ANS”) are a gift of our evolutionary ancestors–the wild ones. We have the ANS we do because of all the species who forged the evolutionary trail behind us. All who made it and also, all who did not. Life is an experiment. We also have a responsibility for carrying this experiment forward, being in service of the pathway of evolution before us. If humans are truly among the “most evolved” species, then our role as stewards for the earth that supports us with food, water, oxygen and PLACE as part of the web of all interconnected living beings should be enough to show respect to our other sentient relatives.
As I write this, I think of the many articles I have read documenting the link between animal cruelty and human violence. I wonder how many animals are ruthlessly killed daily, not for our nourishment and sustenance, but for sport, or due to neglect, abuse, meanness or just not paying attention. And I think of the violence in Haiti, Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Florida and ALL the places where human violence contributes to unbearable suffering, today. Now. Every second of every day. Only a few courageous voices have spoken loudly against the genocide of the Palestinian people. I contemplate how ruthless it is to look away, to forget, not to speak truth to power or to act when the suffering is so visible, right in front of us. I don’t know how many cars drove by the terrified rabbit before and after she was hit. Or how many people turn the channel or flip the page when photos of starving, dehydrated children in Gaza appear, or when gang control of Haiti is mentioned at the same time many Haitians in the United States are terrified of losing their immigration status because the U.S. government proclaims it “safe” again. Or when sensationalized images and news of “Alligator Alcatraz” appear, while high powered people joke about alligators eating immigrants. Or forget that Ukrainians still suffer increasing attacks against civilian targets that the news barely covers anymore. Or that most people in Yemen face severe food insecurity and a barely functioning airport.
The day after I witnessed the rabbit’s cruel death, this Lisa Congdon print popped up on my facebook page:
Slowing down to pay greater attention to that which merits our witness and our action does matter. Every single second of every single day.