West With Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew, and what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache to the bone.

When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, that’s all life is—you’re nothing but a feral thing chasing your hunger every minute of the day.

When your shriveled stomach’s aching with hunger, you forget all about your hungry heart. And you keep on forgetting it a little each day until a stray dog has more heart or soul than you.

God knows I was due a little Light Shining on me from Above, whether I believed in such things or not. Like most people, denying it never got in the way of relying on it. Here and now, older than old, I’ve lived long enough to believe then not believe, then believe and not believe more times than I can count, life being the bumpy ride it is.

But if you really want to know, it always seemed wrong to think an animal’s life isn’t worth as much as a human’s. Life is life.”

“Oh, you say all you want is to get to California,” he went on before I’d even finished the thought, “but you also needed to see a giraffe. You just don’t know why, do you? I’ll tell you why—animals know the secret to life.”

“Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken.

This world of misery is in dire need of some natural wonder to learn secrets to life from.”

“Life is life no matter who or what is living it, boy—a thing to respect,” he said.

That didn’t mean they’d be welcome, especially during the Hard Times with so many folks out of work who needed somebody to be faring worse than them.