Memories on a warm summer morning

There was once a little child X. X had a pet rabbit who fell very very sick. So sick that it could hardly breathe, let alone stand. Its hairs tangled in dirty sticky knobs. They were no longer silky and fluffy. X did not know what to do and decided to "dispose" of it. So X put this sick animal in a rubber plate. Knowing what X was going to do, the rabbit looked at X but was too frail to escape its fate. Though not without hestiation, X flung the strong well-nurished arm and threw the plate with the rabbit in it like a freezby. They landed far at the bank of the river. Even if the rabbit was not killed on landing, it was left to its own device. That was, on the bank of a stinky polluted river, a sick rabbit who had lost its appeal as a pet was exposed to the elements and predators like water snakes and rats.

Growing up, X lost interest in raising pet rabbits or catching and tearing apart mountain crabs. X later rasied two ducklings that were chemically poisoned and bragged by their sellers that they would remain cute and never grew up. X made them an amphibious habitat with a wooden bathtub. They seemed to be happy, but did not live long. They fell down from the 7th floor while X was away in a summer camp.

X did not have a pet after that. X went to the uni a few years later. And in the uni where X lives, there was a dog who was set fire upon once and lost his hairs. He wore a dry-flaky, wrinkled and grey-blueish skin with a few strands of residue hairs here and there. He also wore a pathetic look that always begged for more pity. His skin seemed always itchy. He kept scratching it with the hind legs. And while he was doing that, his hairless penis and testicles dangled - an unpleasant sight. This dog roamed the dorm area and begged for food on the sides of the short praved walkway from dorms to the cafeterias. X felt sorry for this dog, and even stopped once to look at it while waging a mind battle to decide whether or not to feed him. X did not feed him even a morsel of leftovers because it was too ugly and disease-ridden to be comfortably approached.

When reflecting on it, X wished that in the 4 years of uni X had given him food even for once. Now, thousands of miles away, X has no chance to offer him any help even though X won't mind his look anymore.

X believes that X is mature enough to have overcome the emotional reaction to an unpleasant looking animal. The belated maturity came after 25 years. The rabbit has died its lonely betrayed death. The dog has trodden along his life of misery to a lonely death or hopefully to a person whose love and compassion were abundant and indiscriminate. Certainly for the dog, X hoped his fate was the latter and that X were this person. Has X become this person?