I held his limp, warm body in my hands. I'd seen him every day on my morning bicycle ride down Cold Springs Road. Rusty orange and sleek, dashing across the dirt back road. Always, his beautiful coat and bright golden eyes captivated me.

But today, he wasn't running. He wasn't moving. The car he'd encountered had entered his world unbeknownst to him at precisely the wrong moment.

I held him in my arms a good long while as I sat on the roadside dirt. From under the ponderosa pine where I'd seen him crouch in wait for an unsuspecting field mouse or slow-gaited aging chipmunk, on better days, I whispered onto the mountain breeze.

I'm so sorry. I covered him with kinnikkinnick, and said again, They didn't see you. I'm so sorry…

What happens to us, when we stop our lives to notice an animal in distress? I recall a brisk motorcycle ride in rush hour traffic up Boulder Canyon on my way home one summer. Without warning, a mama pheasant and her offspring toddled across the State Highway. Screeching on the brakes and raising a hand to wave down oncoming traffic, the moment arrested.
            The motorists all paused for the impromptu avian parade on warm asphalt. Straddling between my Triumph and the toddling pheasant family, I gesticulated wildly with my left arm.

They hurried their pace, hopping and fumbling along. A motorist smiled and put her car in park.

Mama pheasant and family toddled over to the shoulder. In a flash, feathers and beaks disappeared into the tawny dry grass. I put my Triumph back in gear, checked for any feathered stragglers, and picked up my journey.

Waves of a life-affirming phew washed through my awareness. I’d seen a YouTube video recently of a senator rushing through the grounds of a country club and running down a family of mallards. It not only went viral, but elicited much discussion amidst his constituents.

I was simply grateful for my fellow traveling motorists willing to pause and give a break to the vulnerable little mountain pheasant family. Such pauses in our travels can move us deeply from immersion into a digitally-induced trances or absorptive discursive dialogue to come to the aid of an animal in need. I've seen it time and again, witnessed the end result as people drive a hundred miles to bring a struck badger into Greenwood Wildlife Sanctuary for aid and recovery, a flightless bird frozen in the middle of a mountain road they picked up in hopes they may heal to fly another day. Or an orphaned duckling, brought in to be nurtured by volunteer hands and infant formula, so they may quack at another time.

Sometimes, the wild ones only need a little bit of assistance to escape the perilous path of harm’s way. Fawns separated from does by the road need only a pause in the flow of traffic to reunite. Black bear cubs separated from a sow need only to be left alone to find mama again. If there’s a chance that the family wasn’t fatally impacted in the loss of an adult parent, their offspring need safe passage and privacy to afford their best chance of survival, in more instances than not.

In such instances of helping animals live their best lives out there in the wild as they try to navigate through the more developed parts of our landscape, there is never any hesitation, only action. People step up. It's a gesture, an act, emerging out of a hope that the beautiful Oriole or orphaned fawn or kit fox will be okay, if we can just get them what they need in the precise moment.

Rescuing an animal in need brings out something in us often forgotten. Kindness, tender compassion, born in just that moment. It's when it's needed the most and too often, the part we fail to remember the least. It calls up our inherent goodness from a hidden place and reverence for beings other than ourselves. It reminds us of our humanity.

These moments aren't only for times of emergency or tragedy, but many in between. There are slower urgencies, longer-lasting needs. Fostering a homeless dog to find their way to a permanent home, donating to dog rescues in their times of need, volunteering to save abandoned or trapped animals in floods. There are ways we can all reach out to nurture the better part of ourselves and in so doing, make this human and nonhuman community a little more loving and gracious place to live.

We could all stand just a little more gentleness and beauty in our lives. It can begin with the four-legged and winged ones.