Full of feeling for small miracles of kindness
Kate Holden
February 25, 2011
Perhaps I’m just a bit emotionally leaky at the moment. Watching Sunday night telly a couple of weeks ago, glass of wine in hand, comfortably digesting a bowl of pasta and the evening news, I smiled sympathetically at the newly joyous protesters in Cairo, glazed over at a story about healthcare reform, tuned out while the footy news was on (sorry, Melbourne, football remains a mystery to me, like cryptic crosswords, economics and expensive restaurants) and settled the cat more voluptuously on my tummy.
Then: a story about two racehorses in Britain that had suddenly collapsed and died from suspected electrocution. The footage showed the first horse kicking in agony; the reporter said, “What follows is too distressing to show.” I gasped, and tears sprang to my eyes.
Recovering by the time the next program started, I was soon tearing up along with a survivor of Black Saturday as she admitted “I’m going to cry now”, and told how she heard a magpie sing at first light on the day after the disaster. One little magpie in the blackened forest. The ABC program, Out of the Ashes, followed the effects of the fires on the millions of animals that perished, and the many painstakingly saved and nurtured back to health. I watched as a vet carefully turned over a koala’s blistered paws and thoughtfully ran through possible medical problems. The koala lay in a carer’s arms, stunned and blinking. In the midst of all the trauma and destruction, people hadn’t forgotten the mute and helpless animals. In the following months the koala’s carer, Liz George, coddled and fed it with a syringe full of milk, sourced the exact type of eucalypt leaves, nursed it wrapped in blankets on her lap in the middle of her living room and endured its moods.
“We had a massive storm the other night and the fire-affected ones were really distressed,” she worried. Other animal lovers tracked possums, lizards and tiny bird species, lugged great galumphing wombats around and carefully sponged the melted quills of an echidna. The little beasts’ bright eyes were as quizzical or inhuman as ever, but full of feeling.
Scientist Tarmo Raadik spent eight months sheltering an endangered fish species, the barred galaxias, and finally tipped them back into their river home from a bucket. On his face, a modest, satisfied look. When koala Nina was released back into the bush she shot out of her container and heaved energetically up a tree, never looking back: Liz watched her go, her own face impassive and quizzical now, but full of feeling.
It was impossible not to be moved watching this evidence of human sweetness, this solemn, tender caretaking even as the program reminded us of the other dimensions to the tragedy. And then I put on a DVD of the recent film Creation, a biopic about Charles Darwin and his family. It’s a nice film and contains its own sadness: the Darwins’ daughter Annie died at 10 and much of the story centres delicately on their grief. But what finally undid me was Darwin’s relating the story of Jenny, a baby orangutan captured in Borneo and taken to captivity in 19th-century London. There is a magical scene showing actor Paul Bettany as Darwin meeting, cajoling, playing and dancing with and finally lying tranquilly with the small animal. They lie face-down, his face solemn, hers calm. She picks up his pen and makes “writing” actions. Then he puts out his hand and her tiny one reaches to gently touch it. Towards the end of the film Jenny dies, cradled in her keeper’s arms, mute and docile, infinitely trusting. Her small body sheltered in large human arms. One last knowing gaze from those human-like eyes. Silence.
I wept like a child; I admit it, I howled. But why not? Who can deny that kindness is one of the most moving things in the world, that witnessing it lets us transcend our doubts about our human natures, and remember the graceful mystery of animal ones. There are so many instances when animals have saved humans, when we have saved each other: species-to-species relationships like this are among the most precious and miraculous of all. They come from a pure place, sourced from care and compassion, passion and patience. And above all respect: because we share the Earth, and we are not so different, after all, when we are hurt, or frightened, or comforted.
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