Top three things I think about before bed:1. Gabby. She was ..

Top three things I think about before bed:

1. Gabby. She was my Welsh Corgi Pembroke, who lived with me from 2010 to 2021. She passed from lung disease. We didn’t know she was sick until six months before her death. One day, she was climbing the staircase to my second floor and stopped on the last step, staring at me. I thought she was just trying to manipulate me, since she often did that with the bed and couch to get picked up. I told her to climb up herself. Now, I realize she was suffering. It eats me up inside. The day before she was gone, when she was already very sick, I took her into bed with me on the second floor because she hadn’t been able to climb up for a while. She didn’t want to sleep in the bed and went to another room. I thought she was going to lie on the cool floor there. But she tried to climb down the stairs. As soon as I heard the first step, I rushed to her, but I was too late, and she fell. The soft thud of her falling still echoes in my ears. She was lying on the floor below, breathing heavily. It’s terrifying to see such a smart, strong, and willful creature like that. It’s frightening because something unshakable is breaking right in front of your eyes.



2. Frogs. When my brother and I were still in school (he was about 14, I was 8), he was very interested in history, particularly admiring one famous doctor. My brother would do very bad things to beetles, then moved on to frogs. I didn’t watch him do this, but I always giggled and supported him. I wanted to seem cool. Then, one day, he dug a hole in the sand and poured a bucket of frogs into it. I guess it is obvious what happened next. I was standing right next to him, and then left with him afterward. I can’t excuse myself by saying I was not mature enough —I clearly saw what kind of action this was. Terrible death. But I was filled with a mix of fear and intense embarrassment, worried that I would seem “different.”

 I really wanted my brother's approval.

3. Zhenya. When I was studying at university in my hometown and didn’t plan on going to any capital city, I took in birds for rehabilitation. It happened that a rook named Klyukva and a crow named Zhenya stayed with me because they both had problems with wings. Klyukva was completely wild, but I hand-raised Zhenya. When he was small, we had a very tender relationship, but as he grew older, he became very aggressive, pecking and biting me, breaking things, constantly screaming loudly, and throwing food, even though he had plenty of toys and attention. I just wasn’t equipped to raise a crow. I started ignoring him, locking him in the cage. He made me feel irritated, exhausted. During our last summer together, he lived in an outdoor aviary, and I would just go there to clean, change his food, and water. Sometimes he would come up to me, and I would gently scratch the top of his head. Then he would peck at me again. Living with Klyukva, he became very wild. At the end of the summer, I found them new homes because I was leaving for my studies. Klyukva went to a large bird shelter, and Zhenya was placed with a foster family. They had their own goats, chickens, and geese, and they seemed like very nice people. After handing Zhenya over to them, I quickly ran back to the car because it felt so sad, and I wanted to cry. I also felt ashamed. Because he was my baby, and I had failed him badly. Since then, I’ve only asked those people twice how he’s doing. Now I’m even afraid to write to them. I don’t want to know anything about Zhenya.