My wife has a lovely little vegetable garden.
I have ground squirrel traps set in the backyard around Stephanie’s garden as they like to eat her veggies, and the fencing and marigolds weren’t holding them off.
Checking the traps, I found one empty, one with a small rodent, and one with a beautiful bullfrog, caught by the lip. Not dead, but. clearly terminal if it can’t figure out a way to eat.
I picked it up and for some reason, started to weep. I couldn’t explain it, I just felt like I had been kicked in the chest by a mule.
I put the frog under my shack in the backyard. In thinking about it, I realized the reason I felt so sad was that I took a life that was totally innocent and had no reason to die. A dead ground squirrel who is devouring our garden is one thing; a creature that was just minding its own business and hopping along the side of the house is another thing altogether. The frog did nothing.
Collateral damage when an innocent person is harmed by the careless actions of others. I don’t care if it’s a bullet or a bean bag or teargas or a mouse trap. The frog was at the right place, behind the ferns, eating slugs; but the wrong time (after I had set out a trap).
Black people walk around carrying the wrong time with them every day by just existing. They start half in the wrong place. I see red lights in the rear view mirror, I get a little gripped. My Black friends see red lights and get a surge of adrenalin and wonder of they’re going to get through the next fifteen minutes.
Just something to think about while hopping around.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover