I had to stay late at work to get put a dent in my tsunami-shaped task list. When I decided that I’d made a big enough dent I packed up my stuff and hit the road. I stopped at the bank and the pet store and as I was driving back I turned from Gull Road onto Texel and saw something that broke my heart. There was a young adult squirrel that either had his tail flattened by a passing car or was paralyzed. The neighbor kids were surrounding it, and the best part of me wants to think they were protecting it, but the more cynical and bitter part of me suspects that they were basically torturing it. I don’t know exactly what they were doing, but when I got home I couldn’t stand the idea of this animal in pain, struggling and suffering so I resolved to go inside, fetch my Kukri Machete and head back out. I was looking for the squirrel and I had every intention of assessing its condition, measuring its suffering and ending that suffering. My mind was set, my heart was set and I was slowly inching my way back to where I saw the poor animal struggling. I couldn’t find it. I don’t know what happened to it. Perhaps it survived or perhaps it died and the kids surrounding it had an adult (I hope) remove the remains. I was, and still am, filled with this sad and grim emotion. I know I was headed to do the right thing and I couldn’t simply just blot it out of my mind.

Being filled with this emotion got the wheels spinning and I started to wonder if something like this is a mark of something more. That this overwhelming compulsion to provide a merciful death to something that is irreparably suffering is a mark, on some higher level of compassion and on a more basic level, sentience. I often times ponder the conditions of sentience and this is grist for the mill. What are the hallmarks of sentience? Is it consciousness, or is it a more complicated application of such a thing upon the world? Is it a measure of the value of a soul? Are people who shrug off this kind of suffering callous, somehow less human than others who something like this does bother?

One thing is definitely for certain, this feeling and these ideas are definitely going to dwell with me for quite a while.