The beating of its heart against my hand somehow made me complicit

Posted on 5th June

On Friday evening I saw the cat outside by one of the side lawns, tossing something in the air and then leaping on it when it fell to the ground. Going out to investigate, I found it was a baby duck – a little round ball three inches across. Obviously taken from a nest on the side of a nearby drainage dyke. Putting the cat into the house (it was purring contentedly, as if it was sure I would be pleased with such a present) I took some tissue paper from the kitchen and went out again to lift the duckling from the path where it lay.

It was obviously dying, the eyes without motion, its tiny duck’s bill silently gulping air and panting it out again. Through the tissue paper I could feel its heart beating hard against my hand. There was nothing I could do except put it down in a quiet spot to die (with the faint hope that, as is sometimes the case with injured birds, it might make a recovery and simply shake itself and fly off).

A couple of hours later I went out to check and found it had died. I told myself that one can’t be sentimental about such things, that all of nature is “red in tooth and claw”. But the beating of its heart against my hand somehow made me complicit in its fate.