Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "The Most Important Thing"
By Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share organization PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the October 19, 2005 edition of Wild Again
You were discovered alone on the roadside. Your mother was nowhere to be found. The fact that you were found next to the road gave us little hope for finding her. We doubted that you were abandoned. We believed that you were orphaned, by a vehicle or bullet. You were brought to us as an emaciated five-pound pup. You feared us, and cowered at the back of your cage, averting your eyes from ours. We left you alone as much as possible, and we did not actively seek to make you comfortable when we were present. We knew that a healthy fear of humans was crucial to your long-term chances for survival, and we respected your wildness far too much to attempt to diminish it.
Several weeks passed, and your thin, sickly frame filled out. Your body, once weakened by hunger, grew stronger by the day. You were moved into a much larger enclosure, and there you met another of your kind-- a confirmed orphan; a young female that had been found on another roadside, next to the lifeless body of her mother. The two of you were from opposite sides of the mountains, and at first you did not get along. She hid behind a carrier and bared her teeth when you approached, but you eventually gained her trust. We watched the two of you on a television monitor. We were thrilled when you finally accepted each other.
You and your cagemate passed your childhood together. You played with each other and grew strong. Your coats grew thick, and your appearance gradually changed from gangly and awkward to sleek and agile. You retained your fear of us. When one of us so much as walked past part of your enclosure, you bolted through an opening into an adjacent cage. If we looked into the cage to check on you, you tried your hardest to avoid our gaze. Your needs for food, water, shelter and companionship were all being met, but you would have never found a way to be content while you were contained. You had no way of knowing that from the moment you came through our doors you were in no danger of being permanently held captive. Our goal for you was precisely the opposite.
More than three months passed, and it became clear that you were no longer in need of our care and protection. Your cagemate left first. She was released in her home on the east side of the mountains. We could not send you with her. Part of the responsibility we accepted when we took you in was to ensure that we returned you to the same genetic population in which you were born. Your cagemate was sent to walk the land her mother had walked, and you would do the same. You had to endure an additional week of uncertainty after she left, often pacing, alone in your cage.
At 7:30 am on October 8th, we closed you off in one small, dark section of your enclosure. Two of us then entered the cage and moved toward you. You behaved as you should have, and attempted to run away, but the walls prevented your escape. We caught you and covered your head so we could handle you safely. As we carried you toward a waiting transport container, I felt your jaws close tentatively around my gloved fingers as you briefly toyed with the idea of fight instead of flight. Much to my relief, the latter impulse won out, and you released your grip before we placed you carefully into your transport container.
We loaded you into the back of a pickup truck and drove south for two hours. We brought you within a mile of the spot in which you had been found. The carrier door was opened. You ran more than 60 yards in just a few seconds, and then you stopped abruptly and looked back. You were standing in the middle of a field of tall, dry grass surrounded by forest. Your fur blended perfectly with your surroundings. No longer afraid of my gaze, you looked directly at me. You had been transformed. In that instant, I truly saw you, the whole you, for the first time. In my language you are called "Coyote", and this is how I had referred to you even while you were in a cage. Seeing you in that field, my brain found it impossible to comprehend how the same word could identify you both before and after this transformation. It was clear that your true being is inseparably connected to the world in which you live. I know of no word in my language that can ever accurately represent that connection.
I know that it will never be possible for you to read these words, or to comprehend the meaning of the time you spent with us in captivity. I know you will never understand what happened during these early months of your life, or grasp that we had only good intentions toward you. But as you turned away from me in that field, and ran out of sight I knew that you understood the most important thing. The cage walls were gone, and your life was again your own. Farewell my friend. Live a long, full life. If we should ever meet again, may it be on your terms, not mine.
