Most days in animal welfare is like Christmas, regardless of the weather or what the calendar says. Unlike late December though, you have less than zero interest in opening the box loving wrapped with zip ties or scotch tape. If your team is seasoned and solid in clinical detachment, you take bets on what species is going to eat your face when you pop the top off. Awwwww….is rarely heard. WTF? FML! Are you F*cking kidding me??! Those are the most typical impulsive responses of a team a little too used to this game.
People leave shelters lots of hissing cats duct-taped into boxes, bird cages stuffed with nice but renal-failed cats, and milk crates spilling with mangy or feral puppies. One time, someone left us a chicken in a taped-shut shoebox.
Sometimes they leave the animals in an obvious place, such as right outside the front door; other times, it’s like a treasure hunt: where is the angry cat hidden today? That shoebox chicken was found in the bathroom soon after we opened. We find animals left in crates with lots of toys (because we LOVE him!) but no food or water (because love has its limits, after all), dogs tied to fences, cats tied to trees and puppies next to or atop the dumpster.
On those rare mornings that I’m the opening manager, I make a point to walk the property to find the terrified, angry or debilitated critter someone left overnight. It’s not my favorite game, but I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
On some days though, I don’t have the strength to peak inside the container I just found stashed in the bushes. I peer through the air holes sliced with scissors or a pocket knife. I may lift it up and try to guess what species awaits based on how heavy it is. I sometimes gently shake the laundry basket wrapped up tight in blanket; it it mews, it’s not a dog. On these yellow-bellied mornings of mine, I hand the package off to the medical team, shake my head, and offer a half-hearted I’m sorry, I know it’s alive but I can’t tell you WHAT is alive.
This morning, I discovered the box above. Once it was safely in the hands of the technicians, I turned on my heels and never looked back. I’m now at home, ten hours later, and I still have absolutely no idea what that box gifted us. I could quickly make a phone call or send a text messag to half a dozen people to find out, but no thank you- I’m effectively sublimating my disgust and ass-kicking burnout with a klonopin and $40 bottle of Sancerre wine. Though my educated guess tells me it was cat, it really could have been anything (I’m thinking again of that Manolo Blahnik chicken).
I’ve learned some important life skills I never intended to learn when I went into animal welfare. One is that curiosity won’t just kill the cat, it will kill your interest in opening unknown boxes. Two, ignorance can truly be blissfully blissful. And three, wine does make everything better.
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