I’m grateful today that I got to help in an ironic rescue. My friend up the road had been dealing with in-house rodents for a few weeks and just gotten the problem under control, when she found a baby chipmunk in the bottom of a dry fountain. We had been planning to go for a walk, but instead I drove up with my ‘neonate care’ bag. The baby was weak and dehydrated. She’d been trying to give it sugar water-milk with a syringe but the bottle with tiny nipple I brought was much more successful. As she cradled the sleeping infant, I mixed up sugar water-almond milk, snapped a few pictures, and left her to her mission of mercy.

We are soft-hearted. We hold loving-kindness for all beings, and will drop everything to try to save a creature in distress. Not only us two, but this whole community. A dog who ran off last week (from the very campground we had planned to walk today) during fireworks was finally found safe after the community searched ceaselessly and the church prayed. I’m grateful to participate in any rescue, even of a spider drowning in the dishwater.