Our Commitment to the Value of Individual Life
To watch a raptor soar is to experience the freedom of flight,
to sense the beauty of wildness. Only a silhouette can be seen when a strong bird flies close to the heavens. To glimpse a distant flick of a white tail in shadow is to understand the mystery of the separate world of wild creatures. When I hold the strong feet of a hawk, I dream of throwing him back to the sky.
When I hold the strong feet of a hawk, I dream of throwing him back to the sky. When I bottle feed a fawn, I dream of the day she runs away from me into the woods. It is freedom we treasure, not control, and we would trade every one of our hands-on experiences with wild creatures to have each of them still free and healthy in the wild. Sadly, however, Fellow Mortals exists because more and more creatures’ lives are interrupted every year when they are hit by cars, shot, poisoned, caught in fishing line or orphaned. When that happens, we are here to pick up the pieces of that wild life and provide care and sanctuary until the day when that creature can resume its wild destiny.
It is not just the endangered who need our help, not just the magnificent. The common sparrow, the familiar cottontail, those creatures who share our backyards and our daily lives, deserve and need us just as much. The imperfect, the injured, those born too young, born too late, are those you bring to us for care, and, though the situation may be sad, each individual always bears a greater gift by inspiring our compassion. In healing, we are healed.
Fellow Mortals is more than a place. It is a commitment to the miracle of life, for no being is unnecessary and no life unimportant to the Creator, who weaves us all together into the song of creation.
