Page 104 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

birds.” It’s a poetic reckoning, but MacKinnon’s findings are also deeply practical: “It’s

not that self-awareness is absent in animals . . . but that it is a less useful tool than an

outward mind: to endure among other species, you must experience the world as a place

you share with them.”

Which is what I want to talk about here: sharing the world. In fact, I want to tell you a little

story.

One March morning, some half-dozen years ago, I looked out my living room window

and spotted something dark moving against the patchy snow. Three doors down on the

far side of the street, a raccoon was staggering across a narrow front yard. Keeping one

eye on it, I reached for my phone.

“We’ll be there as soon as possible,” the man at Animal Services assured me. “Thanks

for letting us know.”

I grabbed my coat, yanked on my boots and headed outside. For ten, perhaps fifteen

minutes I stood at a safe distance, warning passers-by, none of whom appeared to

notice the ailing raccoon. Not even when it dragged itself onto the sidewalk. Not even

when it tottered off the curb into the road.

What could I do, wave down every passing vehicle? It was either that or watch from the

safety of the sidewalk while the raccoon tempted traffic like a reckless drunk. Looking up

and down the block, I spotted a third alternative in the form of the old blue box on my