Made a false start at a walk today, last_bastion and I. We've been dealing with various hurdles to getting up and running full blown, but last week we accomplished a full two weeks of five days working out.

Today... was just a walk day.

And then we ran into the animal.

One of the nice things about where we live is that our street dead ends into a park. The general area is very green. If you're careful, you can see deer down in the watershed. If you're observant, you can see rabbits just about everywhere. The problem with this, of course, is their proximity to man.

Today, we saw a fox. It made me jump, how close we were to the animal. Then I understood why. The whole back of one of its back legs was bloody and it wasn't loping so much as it was doing its best to pull itself forward. You could see that it was trying so very hard to get out of sight, but there just wasn't any place for it to get to... and the watershed it appeared to be heading for was still another mile off.

We asked nearby walkers if they had cell phones... a car stopped, and called emergency services. I jogged up to the fire department while last_bastion kept the animal in sight. I hit the doorbell twice, hoping to at least get them to call animal services for me; no reseponse. I jogged back to the apartment and called animal services myself... with last_bastion still standing on the road. The girl who answered wasn't trained to deal with the situation, so she couldn't come out the help. I called the emergency vet clinic, and they gave me another numbers... where I had to leave a message.

As an animal lover, and one who feels a kinship to the animals I share the world with, this sort of thing is frustrating beyond words. I know the creature was hurting. I know the creature was scared. But I couldn't do _anything_ to facilitate a quicker end to its suffering. Save make phone calls that went nowhere.

In the end, I kept my distance, looked it in the eye, and wished it as much well as I could in finding its way to a place to rest in peace.

They have a way of looking back at you, you know? Like they're looking into your soul and responding to you. If I could give voice to that expression, I would say she was saying she understood, and thank you for trying.

Just wish I could have done more.

Raen.