Posts
Does Satan care about my word count?
I had a whole evening "open" for writing yesterday, and what should happen?
One, I come home from lunch to find a stray dog curled up on my front porch. She was wet, shivering and not happy about either. I had to go in through the back door because I feared she'd bite me. I called animal control, which put me in a black mood for the rest of the afternoon.
I also called my post office. I didn't want my postman walking into a potential startle-and-bite situation. I like my postman.
Then I rescued a bat I'd seen the day before in the parking garage. It was obviously not OK. My head tells me I should leave such things alone. That the life and death of one little bat have nothing whatsoever to do with me.
I can't agree with that.
In the same way Big Brother believes he is Justice to those criminals who cross his path, I believe I am Mercy to those animals who cross mine. I cannot just leave them alone and get on with my life.
After driving through pouring rain (for the second night in a row), I gave the bat to the county wildlife rescue. I hope he makes it. I only know I won't pass his frozen body in the parking garage stairwell and berate myself for doing nothing. That is all the hope I can take with me.
But my night of writing was shot to the heated netherworld. Perhaps some write better when their heart breaks and their eyes swell and their head stuffs up with mucus. I don't.
I wrote a bit, but it wasn't anything like it could have been.
Tonight is blown in the writing sense for a school function.
November passes and my word count fails to blossom. I'm not giving up, but this has not been the best week, and Wednesday has barely started.
Sigh.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If it makes you feel any better, don't count the words anymore. If a deadline is motivational, I can understand keeping it, but if it's self-imposed and it is de-motivating, then either modify or just scrap it.
ReplyDeleteI don't see many needy animals anymore, but I used to live in a log cabin in the woods and saw my share back then. I took a dying bat into my HOME once. He had got stuck in an empty dorm building, no food or water for maybe a week. We called a "bat rescue lady" (yes, she was in the PHONE BOOK under bat rescue!) who started to come get him, but she was a two-hour drive away. She told us to try to feed it. So I turned on the porch light to attract moths, caught the moths and fed them, alive, to the bat with tweezers (he wouldn't eat it if it didn't wiggle). Did you know that moths are actually CRUNCHY? I would have guessed them chewy. After about six moths (that porchlight makes them sitting ducks) the bat got back his strength and started flying around in my house. We herded him out the door and he flew away. Called bat lady and she turned around and went home. Never did get to meet her.
I "wasted" that evening catching moths, but I was never sorry. I have a bat story that few can match and I helped a very useful creature. Bats are like the best mosquito-eaters in the whole world. I have a soft spot for honeybees, ladybugs, and non-vemomous spiders, but anything that sucks my blood and leaves an itchy welt gets no mercy from me! I will befriend any natural predator of the mosquito or the rattlesnake.
All this to say that it's all right to lose a night or two to help animals. You wouldn't have felt any better had you ignored them and let them suffer, now would you? God sent those animals to YOUR house for a reason. I think God cares about your word count, but He cares about your priorities more. Congratulations, your priorities are spot-on.