On the Night’s Plutonian Shore
Last night on our family outing, almost home, I thought "re-routing'
There could be no doubting that we need to walk a little more
Let's go see the hubcap station, a recent public installation
Why the extra complication? Only art and nothing more.
OK, I can't keep up the rhyme scheme, but here's the story:
We were on our way home from a family walk around the neighborhood and I suddenly got a calling in my mind that we should go to the hubcap statue near the county government center. The path goes through a construction site. We stopped to look at the new buildings through the construction fences and noticed what looked to be a raven inside one of the almost-completed buildings, running back and forth in front of a window. It became clear that he was trapped under a large panel of some construction material and wasn't able to get back to the open door.
I watched for a few minutes, hoping he would figure out how to move the panel, but he could not. It was the Friday night after Thanksgiving, and if no one was working over the weekend, he could be trapped there until Monday with no food or water. I thought about trespassing on the construction site and seeing if I could free him myself, but decided that I should go through the proper channels first.
I called County Animal Services and they were not helpful. "It will probably just figure out how to go out the way it came in. But call again if anything changes." I watched for another 1/2 hour and there was no change. He just kept running back an forth tapping on the glass and trying to get out. Karla called the security number on the construction fence. They said they'd send someone, but no one showed up. Finally I called a different animal services line and wouldn't give up. They said "OK, we'll send the fire department to look at the situation". This was good news, because the fire house is only two blocks away. (Why is this the fire department's business rather than the department that is literally named "Animal Services"? I don't know.)
The fire department showed up, and the older white guy who seemed to be in charge gave me the same treatment as the original animal services person: "Oh, it'll figure out how to get out. We don't need to do anything. The construction crew will handle it." I've been there for an hour at this point watching the raven get more and more traumatized, and I know that none of this is correct, so I figure that I'll just have to wait until they leave, and break into the construction site myself to save the raven.
But then something awesome happened that restored my faith in humanity. The 2 younger fire fighters who were also there broke open the fence, ran into the construction site and rescued the raven, all while the chief had his back turned and was talking to us about how we should just do nothing and it will all work out fine. The raven flew into a nearby tree and we all applauded.
So what's the moral? I don't really know. There was no reason for us to go that direction except that the idea suddenly popped into my head and I couldn't ignore it, as if the raven were somehow summoning me.