Daily Herald columnist Jim Slusher: Humanity, the news and creatures in crisis
I have a personal memory that seems relevant to a recent story in the news.
I am called to my front door on a warm day in July. I look out to find four barefoot boys, ranging in age from 10 to 12 years old, standing in my front yard. Some are shirtless. Some wear T-shirts. All are in baggy shorts. They are smudged at the knees, elbows, cheeks and foreheads with the summer grime of suburban schoolboys. It is sunny, early afternoon. Arranged in a sort of semicircle and staring at me, they form a tableau something like an odd mix of a rock music album cover and a Norman Rockwell portrait. They all carry the plaintive, hopeful grimace of children resigned to the last resort of problem-solving, approaching a parent.
"What should we do?" my oldest son asks. "We found him under a tree."
His friend is balancing a glassy-eyed rabbit the size of a house cat, its mottled gray fur a tempest of mange, in the crooks of two elbows. The animal is alive but clearly in shock.
I look in the eyes of the four children. They are weighted with sincere worry.
"I don't know that we can help him," I stammer. "But let's get him to a vet to see."
It so happens that there's a veterinarian's office a block and a half from my house. We rush in a grim parade to the building and shoulder our way through the front door, the friend still cradling the creature.
From behind a counter, a startled attendant gazes wide-eyed at the gaggle of urchins.
"They found him beneath a tree," I say.
"Can you help him?" says one boy.
"Yeah, can you fix him?" says another.
The attendant asks us to wait. She returns with a veterinarian in blue scrubs. The boy holding the rabbit stretches out his arms, and the vet gently lifts the rabbit onto the counter.
"Let's take a look," he says, and he begins to prod the animal on its back and sides. He places a stethoscope against its chest.
At length, he allows that he needs more time to assess the damage. He tells the boys he will have to take the animal to the back. He promises to do what he can and says to call back the next day.
By the following noon, the boys are back in our kitchen. "Let me talk to him," pleads the boy who had been holding the rabbit. It is 20 years ago, and we still have a landline phone. I punch in the number of the vet and hand the receiver to him.
"Yes," he says. "We brought a rabbit in yesterday that was in trouble. You said to call back today."
His face falls.
"Oh, OK. Thank you," he musters and hands me the phone.
"There was nothing they could do," he says. "They had to put him down."
Young shoulders slump all around. I try to offer some consoling words. The boys turn and shuffle outside, lips pursed, heads bowed in grim acceptance of indifferent fate.
This memory comes to me as I reflect on the story we followed last week about the attempt to rescue a bald eagle that bird-watchers spotted New Year's Day standing listlessly on a piece of ice in Waukegan Harbor. The discovery set in motion a chain of activities, including a call to a volunteer with a local group that stands ready to rush to the aid of birds in distress wherever they may found. The group gets 10,000 calls a year.
Sadly, like that of my sons and their friends, this rescue attempt proved vain. The troubled eagle died a few days after being retrieved from the ice, the suspected victim of eating a poisoned rodent.
But we report on many stories that do have a happy ending. In December, we told of the successful move of a family of eagles at Mooseheart Child City and School near Batavia. Another story described the valiant rescue of a fawn that had fallen into a home's window well. We've profiled the Kane Area Rehabilitation and Education for Wildlife and the work of Glen Ellyn's Willowbrook Wildlife Center, which cared for more than 11,500 injured animals last year.
Invariably, these stories attract attention. Serious attention. Concern that belies the late Larry Lujack's famously snide growl, "Animal STORRR-ees." And this gives me a warm feeling, no matter how they end. We humans pose ourselves arrogantly at the top of nature's "food chain," but there is something in us, many of us anyway, that nonetheless expresses tender compassion for our fellow creatures.
Already in 2023, we have reported on monumental and important events. The anniversary of an insurrection at the nation's Capitol. The tortured process of naming a U.S. House speaker. The memory of a horrendous 1993 mass murder, and the prison death of a notorious suburban killer. Fires, crashes, controversies, war. All manner of shock and awe. "What kind of a species are we?" one well may ask.
And yet we have among us people who keep kayaks on top of their cars so they can rush at a moment's notice to aid a bird in distress. Volunteers who bottle feed orphaned opossums. Children who scoop up injured rabbits and rush them to care.
It may seem such stories do not rank with the decisive news of our time. But look into the welling eyes of a tough 10-year-old with a dazed and mangy hare in his arms and tell me that is so.
jslusher@dailyherald.com