Death of a Centipede

Death of a Centipede

It seems I am destined to be a hospice hostess to disabled, aged insects and small animals.  The centipede that was retired in the sink of my new offices’ bathroom expired today.  Memorial Day, I fostered a monarch that had hit a car but survived, only to die later in the box room I fixed it, complete with fruit nectar and butterfly flowers.

When I taught at a community college years ago, a box elder bug lived on my console; it seemed like the same but kept me company for more than a year.  Twenty years later, I’m tempted to go find it.

About ten years ago, I saved a Polyphemus moth and returned it to its trees behind my school.  About the same time, tiny fruit bats found their way into my classroom, and hung upside down from the sprinklers.  One slept this way on the sprinkler outside my office.  My students said I channeled them with my Anne Rice books and my vampires.  Oh well.

I’ve tried to return and save baby birds to their nest, and once save a rabbit.  Another time, it was an ungrateful baby mouse that bared its nasty little teeth at me as I lowered it gently to the other side of our fence, into a field full of its own kind.

Two weeks ago, almost, a was holding a tiny kitten, a little stray that tried scratching its way into a house.  We all thought she would be fine, adorable cuddled on her little blanket, but she quietly stopped breathing.  This was the hardest to take.