(Over the weekend I shared one aspect of the story below with
another animal-lover involved in the rescue community. We first met a year ago while stopped for
lunch in her North Carolina town. I
thought of my recent experience as she shared discouragement in relation to the
various attitudes she encounters towards animals. As I heard myself relating what follows I
wondered why I had not written of this experience. Whatever the case and cause, I decided this
was another of those simple stories that I need to share, yes, need to because whether
others consider or even read what I write, I
need to be reminded daily of these things. )
It was the afternoon of June 11 and exhaustion suddenly
overcame me. As soon as I closed my
eyes, I saw an eye, a woman’s eye. She
had not appeared to me for some time. This
time though her eye was closed. Within
seconds she vanished then returned again with her eye open. The eye was quickly followed by a raccoon’s
masked face which was joined by another. Two raccoons whose faces struck me as
young remained in my field of vision then vanished as a golden hand its palm
facing upward extending from me as if I were offering my hand to someone or
something.
I had seen raccoon eyes and the eye before but never a
golden hand. I noted this series of images before returning
to work.
Just over two weeks passed when I was returning from my morning
walk and heard my name called. It was
Judy from a few houses down standing in the yard calling out that she had an
emergency. She was animated as she called me but not in a
panicked way.
As soon as I heard her say, “two baby raccoons” I smiled
inside knowing this was connected to the vision. Curled up in a plastic milk crate by another
neighbor’s side door were two very young raccoons fast asleep. Three of us agreed it was wise to leave them
in hopes the mother would return. I was
relieved yet curious and torn. This was the time of day usually reserved for my
writing, time easily filled with distractions.
It was all I could do to stay focused and not intervene yet not
intervening felt right.
The next morning I discovered the raccoons were gone. Judy and I both cheered and I went about my
day wondering how this was connected with the vision.
I learned the prior day’s events were a prelude to the rest
of the story when Judy called again. The
raccoons had been found in the yard of our newest neighbor who swiftly hired an
animal trapping service. A man had
already arrived and for several hundred dollars caught one of the babies and
left baited traps for the remaining one which had climbed a tree. A
third neighbor asked the man what he would do with the baby and was told he
would abide by federal guidelines. When asked if this meant he would kill it,
he only reiterated that he would follow guidelines. This neighbor looked up the guidelines and found
them fuzzy to say the least. I then
learned one local trapper uses the raccoons he traps to train his hunting
dogs. This made me sick.
If you don’t know me you may think this dramatic, but I was
heartbroken. In the two weeks between
the vision and this day, a baby robin Judy found and I had been feeding died,
one that I was taking to Walden’s Puddle the area rehabilitation center for
injured wild animals and Jerry had just found a baby bat dead in our yard. I noted in my journal “Sometimes life feels
unbearable.”
I weighed whether I was to intervene and call the
neighbor. What if he was upset and told
me to butt out? This was someone I would
be living next door to for who knows how long.
Judy persisted and called someone in the neighborhood that traps feral
cats for spaying. I was in my raised
beds trying to dig my sorrow away when Judy and Cici arrived with a trap. I feared it was too small but agreed to set
it overnight in hopes of beating the business man to the other baby.
The next morning my trap was empty and I felt panic. To ignore calling the neighbor felt like I
was ignoring the vision. I had to reach
out to my neighbor.
I suspect some people in small towns, like the one in which
I grew up, think urban folk don’t know their neighbors. This may be true for some neighborhoods but
not Westwood. Six households in my little neck of the woods
have been occupied by the same residents for going on twenty years with Judy
having lived there much longer and the neighbors on either side of me for
around eight years each. We have an
unofficial neighborhood watch when it comes to one another. Our watch includes animals. We’re accustomed
to raccoons and opossums navigating our yards at night. The
new neighbor wasn’t. He was frightened;
concerned the raccoons would try to nest under his house.
I offered to pay half of the fee he had already paid if he’d
give me the baby assuming it had been caught.
He confirmed it was trapped and the trapper had been alerted.
When he heard of Walden’s Puddle though he
quickly told me to get the baby if it was still there.
Can you feel how elated I was when I found these dear eyes
looking at me?
Yet another neighbor helped me get the raccoon to a carrier
she had and with the raccoon in the front seat I made the thirty minute drive
singing most of the way. I sang and this
dear, dear animal made a chirping, purring sound in return like one of my cats
when she’s extremely content. It seemed
the raccoon was singing back to me.
I’ve heard of Walden’s Puddle for years but had never taken
an animal there. As I handed over the
raccoon and made a donation, a woman walked in with a severely dehydrated fawn
in her arms. It had been in the middle
of the highway when she came upon it in her car. It didn’t budge even when she
got out of her car and walked up to it. The
staff immediately took it and I walked out knowing I had found heaven on
Earth.
I drove away thinking of the song “We’ve got to get back to
the garden” knowing Earth is the garden and Walden’s Puddle is a special part
of this heaven that’s Earth.
I called the neighborhood network to share my success and
thank them for their help only to learn the trapper was not only upset someone
had gotten the raccoon but was now trying to catch the mother. The neighbor had signed a 7 day contract and
for whatever reason couldn’t or didn’t tell the man to not return even though
the man had been paid in advance.
I called a trapper associated with Walden’s Puddle to see
what he charged in situations such as this.
Three hundred dollars was the discounted
rate since the mother wasn’t in an attic or crawl space. (I’m in
the wrong line of work!!) I stopped at
the neighborhood hardware store to look into the cost of a large humane trap. I learned Dwight and his sons at Hillsboro
Hardware are part of my tribe too as they shared of rescuing bunnies from their
yards so their dogs couldn’t get them.
And as I paid for a trap, I heard playing on the store
radio, “We’ve got to get back to the garden.”
The Universal ipod confirmed my journey.
I’m one of those people that know a line to a song but never the entire
song and when I think I do I discover I don’t know the real lyrics at all. Before leaving the parking lot, I looked the
lyrics up on line to read as you probably know the line that goes: We are
golden.
My neighbors are golden as is my new neighbor. He agreed that if I used my trap, I could trip
his rendering it harmless each night.
Three mornings later I awoke to find the adolescent mother
in my trap.
Unlike her baby she was
initially very upset.
She growled fiercely as I consoled her.
I squatted by the cage and said:
“
I know
it’s scary. Life on Earth gets hard.
When humans don’t understand the heart, it gets hard. Life gets hard and
the heart gets hard.” I made the
chirping sound the way its baby had talked to me hoping it would understand.
“
That’s
the language your baby made. It’s your first language. I love you and am so sorry for what people
have done to you.”
At first as I spoke, the raccoon’s ears trembled. Then I realized I had my journal in front of
me, like a shield over my heart. I lay my journal aside and something
shifted. You may think it was in my mind
but I saw the shift in the raccoon’s eyes.
I drove again from Nashville this time with a raccoon in my
back seat and although it never chirped to me, it never growled after that first time.
What I ‘got’ during this drive and what I underscored with
my friend over the weekend is something I repeatedly am taught by the animals I
encounter. I was so happy loving this
animal yet suddenly I realized there was a deeper love than mine in the
car. This animal I realized loved me more
than I could fathom, more than I loved it. We shared a bond that went beyond the moment. I knew it appreciated my caring for it but
most of all for caring for her babies.
She seemed to say, “Thank you for extending the golden hand
of your heart to my child and me.”
The animals come here
because they love us so. They keep
coming to Earth because they have a hope in us that many of us don’t even have
in ourselves. They are here partnering with us in this time of an
unfolding great Mystery involving the waking up of the Divine Feminine. They
offer themselves to us in hopes that we might realize who we are.
Who are we? Many of us
are golden. We carry a golden heart from
which we can at any moment extend a golden hand. This
is our first language when young yet we like the animals trade trust and love
for defensiveness and hostility, masking our fear like the mother raccoon’s
initial growl masked her trembling ears.
What I know about myself, which may or may not be true for
you, is when I stop extending myself be it to people or to the animals my heart
starts to disconnect then gradually tune out and harden.
All of us with golden hearts must continue extending
ourselves, offering a hand to one another, those we don’t know or think we know, to the animals and to Nature. To do otherwise
means we miss our reason for being alive. To do otherwise, means we miss our role in this return of the Divine.
-Dawn, The Good News Muse 17 July 2012
Coming outside prompts a stirring in me and I didn't even know I needed to be stirred. When I am tending, something shifts. Ensuring the animals are fed especially in times of drought, seeing Summer's first Surprise Lily emerge overnight from seemingly nowhere, knowing a deer's around or finding green in the yard where last week there was drought brown - all these things feed me and remind me of who I am.
I offered to pay half of the fee he had already paid if he’d
give me the baby assuming it had been caught.
He confirmed it was trapped and the trapper had been alerted. When he heard of Walden’s Puddle though he
quickly told me to get the baby if it was still there. 
This morning I had a vision of what initially reminded me of an intricate spider web or the center of yellow flowers I saw last summer. It was unusual because this glistening image of white light had a large star fish in the center. I recorded what I saw then went to sleep. We had gotten up before daybreak to bless the trees and plants with sacred water from Glastonbury Well.
Instead this weekend I've sat surrounded by crisp leaves in the grass, grass that looks, smells and sounds more like straw. I noted as I first sat down that my yard felt like a nest. 'This,' I thought ,'is why birds build nests.' There was a softness I don't experience lying in green grass. 
My dear neighbor here in the country walked into the backyard this morning to say hello and found me pressed against a tree. I stood my arms reaching as far as they could around the trunk of an old tulip poplar as Jim a devout church-going seventy something asked, "Are you meditating?"
