The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1339 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I felt really cross with myself–I should have checked on it during the night–it might have needed feeding or–oh I don’t know–but it was my responsibility–and I let it down. So much for working miracles with the magic light–yeah–waste of time, and confirms that there is no benevolence in the system–I mean, how could a benign God let a baby die? Nah, religion is the bullshit of the masses.

I told the children what had happened and explained that there might have been injuries from the car accident that we didn’t know about. At first the news was met by silence, then a few chuckles then tears–and from Trish–anger.

Danny and Billie went up to see the little body and came back with her crying and him with arm round her. Livvie and Julie went to see and they both came back crying. I phoned Leon but he wasn’t there. Finally, Meems and Trish went to see it and burst into tears–then Trish began shouting at the universe, venting her anger and pain. Sometimes I think this girl could be my natural child had I been able to have any.

I tried to calm her down, but she ran off to her bedroom. I took the others back to the house and Jenny helped me console them. I would try and explain to them a bit later. In the meantime I went back up with Tom and offered to help dig the grave in Leon’s absence. Danny had followed me and grabbed a shovel.

I found an old sheet and wrapped the unfortunate animal in it and shut the shed. I sent Tom into the house to rest, he’d done his part–Danny and I would do the rest.

We picked a corner of the orchard which I thought would be suitable and we began digging. It’s a long time since I dug a grave for a pet and forgot what a back breaking task it is. We set to with spades and mattock and an hour later and two aching backs, we had a small pit appearing about two foot deep and four feet long.

I hacked away with the mattock missing perhaps the muscle I’d lost through oestrogen use, I’m sure a few years ago it didn’t seem this difficult to dig holes. We got down another nine to twelve inches and I decided that we’d stop before we ended up in it as well. Danny helped me out of the yard deep hole, which seemed deeper because of the spoil heap surrounding it.

I walked down to the house and said that Danny and I were burying the fawn, did anyone want to come and say goodbye to it. They all wanted to except Trish who was still upstairs–I asked Livvie to go and tell her what was happening, and went back to the shed.

Between us, Danny and I carried the dead weight of the little animal to the pit and we gently laid it down on a bed of the straw and covered it with straw. The children, including Trish came to watch.

I said a few words about the sadness of its short life and that life was sometimes seemingly cruel perhaps because we didn’t understand it. I also said to the children that sometimes things die even though we try our best to stop it happening. I chickened out of saying we would all die some day–too much information.

The children all said good bye and then helped us fill in the hole and tamp it down afterwards. After this, we planted a small holly tree on the grave to mark it and I left them to take buckets of water up to water it in.

I needed some space and went up to wash away the dust and grime of my burial duties–my back was killing me, not being used to manual labour. I decided to have a bath–a hot one.

I’d no sooner got myself into the water with much ooh-ing and ah-ing–well it was pretty hot–than Trish came into the bathroom and sat on the side of the bath. She dipped her fingers into the water and pulled them out quickly. “That is too hot, Mummy.”

“That’s okay, we can use the water for soup later.”

“Yuck–mummy soup–yuck and double yuck.”

I was tempted to say people receiving communion were doing even worse than that but left it–there was no point in confusing her with my prejudices.

“Why did the baby deer die, Mummy?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, these things happen.”

“But we gave it lots of blue light, and that always saves things, doesn’t it?”

“Not always, darling, sometimes it seems as if it was something’s time to die–perhaps it was the fawn’s time.”

“But that’s silly–how can something that was only born yesterday be due to die?”

“Trish, I don’t know why it died–perhaps it was because it had lost its mummy–I have no idea.”

“You should have done a post autumn.”

“I think you mean a post mortem?”

“Do I? Any way you slice it open and see why it died–they do it the telly all the time.”

“Trish, there was no way I was going to slice open that poor little creature–its life had been short and sad enough already–besides, I don’t know what I’d be looking for.”

“Clots and bleeding–ruptured organs.”

“Oh yeah, and how d’you know all this?”

“I watched it on the Discovery channel.”

“Lovely, I’m glad I’m not eating anything.”

“You could have eaten it–it’s venison, isn’t it?”

“There is no way I am going to eat anything which came into this house as a guest for however short a time.”

“Oh alright, but I could have looked for injury for you.”

“Trish, I’ve dissected animals doing biology–it’s more difficult than it looks–and it could be that the birth was caused by the crash and was early–so the baby wasn’t really ready to live outside its mother.”

“It seemed alright to me.”

“Look, I don’t know why it died–could have been a broken heart for all I know–some babies can’t live without their mothers.”

“Well I had to.”

“Yes but you were cared for by others.”

“Not really–not until I came to you.”

“In which case be thankful for what you have. We tried to raise the fawn and we failed. It isn’t important why we failed because I doubt we’ll be trying it again.”

She dipped her hand in the bath again–this time for longer–then she dried it and began taking her clothes off–the next moment, she was squeaking as she jumped into the water with me–the joys of parenthood?

Despite my grumbles it was too hot for her–she stayed so I washed her back for her as she sat between my legs. She washed my legs and feet–I couldn’t even see them as she was in the way.

Finally, we stood up and showered, washing our hair before rinsing ourselves off and drying ourselves. She seemed to have calmed down and when I sent her off to dress, she seemed back to her normal self.

Billie had taken a photo of the fawn on her cell phone camera and uploaded it to her computer. Apart from her finger tip in the top corner, it was a reasonable photo, which Trish cleaned up using Photoshop or whatever program we have to do photos.

It’s embarrassing that I have a seven year old who knows more about computers than I do–but that seems to be a fact of life these days.