Just How It Is · 9:31pm Apr 8th, 2016
I'd never heard a sound like that before. Little chirps and cackles like a bird and a hyena had gotten into it. It was a sharp intrusion on that otherwise peaceful summer day. Once I found the source of it I watched intently.
It was a blur of orange fur at the edge of the treeline, two foxes fighting each other over something. Despite the high pitch, there was no mistaking the violent intent of the sounds coming out of them. I could hardly keep up with them as they jumped around on each other, biting wherever their mouths could grab, breaking off and biting again. Neither of them had any care as to where the fight landed them; they ran into trees, sticks, stumps, tripping over the landscape and each other just to get the next strike in.
It was visceral and barbaric, the way they went at each other; no grace, no forethought, just bite where ever they had the chance, and bite hard. Every time one bit something vital the other fox would yelp and give a little. After a few strikes it was pretty obvious which one of them was going to win. I leaned on a post holding up the small wire fence next to me, captivated at the display.
Finally one of the foxes decided that it had enough, and stopped fighting back. The other fox seemed to take it as a victory and quickly disappeared away into the treeline. Just as quick as I'd noticed it, it was over. That little fight couldn't have lasted longer than thirty seconds, at least when I first started watching it. That was more than enough time to get a substantial amount of damage in, apparently.
The remaining fox didn't chase after his opponent, he didn't even bother running anywhere. He slowly crawled towards the treeline, but didn't make it more than three steps towards it before he sat down in the grass. It looked so mundane, like any dog sitting down on a hot day for a quick rest.
I was feeling pretty adventurous, and the big bag of feed I'd brought over could wait, so I walked over to the fox, expecting it to run away at the sight of me. It never did. I couldn't tell if it actually saw me or not, as I got about halfway to it, it was completely on the ground. Once I was just a few feet away from it, it became pretty obvious why it didn't seem very afraid of me.
Blood stained the fur around his neck, and the little fox's breathing was pretty ragged. He looked forward towards the treeline, not really giving me any attention. It seemed the other fox had nicked him just right, and the animal in front of me was living its last few moments on this earth.
The blood continued to matte the fur along his neck, sprinkling into the dirt underneath him as well. I knelt down to get a closer look at him. I'd never seen anything like that before. I'd hunted animals before and outright killed others out of necessity, but never like this. There was something so... human in his eyes. I might have just been imagining it, but as that little fox looked toward the treeline, it definitely looked like he was scared, like he knew he was going to die. I halfway pleaded with him, thinking that the blood on his neck wasn't really that much, and he could probably survive it. It was wishful thinking.
Time seemed to crawl by as I listened to his pitiful attempts at breathing. He lasted a lot longer than I thought anything would with a hole in its neck. I don't know how long I sat there beside him until he stopped. I barely even noticed when he turned motionless. His breathing had gotten so quiet that I couldn't even hear it anymore, and finally he just stopped altogether.
Dirt clung to his still-wet eyes, as his body didn't bother to blink it away anymore. Something had left him. Maybe it was just the lack of blood moving through him, but I could tell that something just wasn't there anymore. Just like that, he was dead in the harsh Texas sun, and for what? Territory? Some lady fox? I had no idea. Not really a subject I ever bothered looking into. All that's for sure is that I just watched a fox kill another fox.
I picked him up out of the dirt, making a mental note not to wipe my sweat with that hand. If I left them out there I knew he'd make the entire yard smell within a few days. I played with the idea of burying him, but the thought seemed childish, and I had other things I needed to do.
I walked for a minute or two into the woods and set his body in some leaves, leaving him for coyotes or vultures or whatever else was hungry for dead fox around there.
As I walked back I wondered if that other fox would even care that he took a life of his own kind. Deep down I knew this was nature and he certainly didn't, but the thought still crept into my head. I wondered if he had to sit there and watch that fox die like I did if he'd feel anything, if he might see the consequences of his actions and think about it next time he got into it with another fox. I wasn't so dumb I didn't realize a fox didn't exactly have the same empathy as a human being, but it was still a thought.
That's just how it is, I guess. I played with the thought of what I might go through if I had to do the same for a moment, but it was quickly lost as my focus shifted back onto the work I had to do.
My entire life I've always believed you should be responsible for your own safety. Sometimes you have to be. Ignoring the political implications (as well as keeping it out of the comment section), the logical conclusion to that statement is that if it comes down to the wire, you might have to take a life.
These days we see people dying all the time. If you play video games, I'm sure you've seen thousands upon thousands of people dying, and probably killed a lot of them yourself. A hail of bullets in an fps, the swing of a sword in an rpg, and so on. Death is a pretty mundane thing in a lot of ways around us. Movies, television, video games... thousands of uncharacterized people could fall before our eyes and the shock value is completely lost on us. It happens all the time. We've seen it a million times before through a million different mediums. Not like those actors or digital characters breathing their last breath has any real impact on us. Even a character we care about dying isn't really that big of a deal. We might be upset for a little while our favorite actor won't be playing on a show we like anymore, or that a good character in a book dies and we gasp and cry "No, not them! Why couldn't it have been the character I don't like?" but it's still not real. We might be upset for a few hours, or even a few days, but the emotions are still just a background thought in your everyday life.
Actually killing someone, though... that's not something we ever think about. There are no jump cuts or re-dos in real life. You actually have to see the consequences of your actions, think about what it means to push someone out of the land of the living; what they were like in their life and what you just took away from the world. That's not something that just ends up as a background thought, maybe not at first anyway.
Thankfully, I've never killed anything besides a few animals, and I'm glad that I live in a society where I might never have to step up to humans, but there's always that chance. Just like Daring couldn't get out of that jungle without killing, you never know if you might get into a situation where it's either you or them. I know which end of that situation I'd chose, but even then, you still have to wonder what you might go through, and in the end, if you can actually live with what you did.
Just something to think about.
That is quite a bit to think about, the ramifications of even coming down to the thought of it. And the question of if you can live with yourself after the fact. And you do have a good point.
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Am I guessing correctly the quoted story is akin to an experience you've had?
I see a lot of parallelisms with the "Do No Harm" you wrote (GJ, btw...), like Daring watching the griffon die...slowly.
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I wrote that out, I just put it in quotes to better separate it. That experience was definitely the main inspiration for the story.
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Yeah, buy "quoted" I meant those in the quotation text; apologies for not making that clear enough.
The main story is really good too, if you didn't read my comment in the story itself. And you're right. Death is taken too lightly today...We can just shake our heads when we see a plane crash and read the figures, just to forget it within the hour.
If someone else must die in order for you to live, what right have you to foist that responsibility on someone else? What makes you so special and them so utterly insignificant that they should have to kill another living being for your sake? No, I believe that it is every man's duty to protect both himself and his kin, regardless of help or intervention from others.
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Amen.