I work in the Redwood Shores part of Redwood City, which borders one of the inlets of the San Francisco Bay. From my office, I can look out, past the parking lot and the one-lane road and see wildlife and nature. The road basically serves as the divider between nature and modern civilization.
Today, as I'm driving out from lunch, I stop my car so that a duck and her two ducklings could cross the street. As I wait for them to pass, I notice that the two ducklings can't make it up the curb, and the mother duck is quacking madly. I turn on my emergency lights, step out of my car (which is not quite blocking traffic), and carry the two ducklings over the curb. A mother pushing a stroller nearby comes up to me, and says "I guess you've done your good deed of the day." I'm about to leave, when I notice a van stopped on the other side of the roadway divider. "There's some on this side too." "There are?" I walked over to the other side of the divider, and sure enough, there were 6 other ducklings. I caught one and carried him over to the mother duck. The guys in the van saw me doing this, and got out of the truck to help me catch and carry the ducklings over. It didn't take very long at all, probably less than 5 minutes.
After the mother duck and her ducklings had gone on their way (on the side of the road they were trying to cross to, there's a canal of water), I started to think about life, the universe and how seemingly unrelated events just seem to click together.
A series of events led to me having lunch at two, instead of my usual one o'clock meal, which normally doesn't even require that I leave the office -- but I had errands to run today, which seemed rather important at the time, but not time critical. If others had not stopped to help, I would have spent the next twenty or thirty minutes helping the duckling cross, and I wouldn't have minded one bit.
I think most of the time, we think we don't make much of a difference in the world. But we do. Our actions may never seem like much on our parts, but sometimes those actions mean the world to them.
When I think about human beings helping animals, my mind sometimes starts thinking about how this all seems to the animal being helped. Those ducklings I carried over were scared of me, scared that I was going to eat them instead of help them I suppose. If you think of the animal world, there aren't many other animals which would knowingly aid another species.
that is adorable... what a cool story.
for some reason this made me think of those large gaggles of japanese tourists I would see around all the time.
i have heard of instances of gorillas befriending kittens and stuff, it's rather interesting to think where our predilection for pets and animal companionship comes from.
Aww. That was so sweet of you, Mike. Well, you and the occupants in the van, of course. =D