Armadillo
By Elizabeth O’Brien, LPC-S
I was already feeling fragile, having slept fitfully, rattled by disturbing dreams. Some part of me couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. I forced myself into my morning ritual, firing up my iPad, New York Times app, coffee by my side.
The top story hit me in the face: a German airline crash, in which 150 innocent people had died when the plane slammed into a mountain. A young German co-pilot, it seemed, had deliberately downed the plane. There were rumors he suffered secretly from depression.
As I tried to make sense of the tragedy, my husband walked in the door from an early-morning workout. “When you walk the dogs, head right, not left,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“There’s an armadillo in the road. It’s been hit by a car.”
“Is he dead?” I never refer to animals as “it,” as I believe them to be sentient beings.
“No,” he said. “Still alive.”
“We have to do something!” I said.
Michael grabbed the big walking stick we had bought from Mestizos on the Rio Grande in Big Bend, and we headed to the top of our cove, turning left. There, by our neighbor’s mailbox, was an enormous, regal armadillo, upside down, like a beetle on its back. His underside was pink and tender, and his clawed feet and pointed snout were twitching. Faint squeaks emanated from his bloodied mouth.
After a few failed attempts, Michael was able to push him toward the curb and flip him over. In those few seconds, I prayed that once righted, he would scoot away, battered but intact. But no, his beautiful, ribbed shell was cracked, and he was bleeding from his abdomen. He could barely hold up his head, and trembled with the effort. I knew he was doomed.
I am not a crier, but a sob escaped my throat. It felt as if it had exploded from deep within my gut, where it had been lingering since my mother’s death more than a year ago. I felt out of control. I had no way to put the animal out of his misery. We don’t keep guns, and even if we did, I could not have pulled the trigger. So I called Animal Control, and then the neighbor in question, warning her not to take her young children out front.
I got ready for work. But before leaving, I fought with my husband: old business, regressive detritus of marriage, came spewing out of us both. My emotional immune system was weak, out of whack, and so I devolved into old neuroses and defenses.
Though Animal Control had removed the armadillo by the time I left for work, I thought of the poor, innocent creature for the rest of the day. Here this noble, prehistoric species has survived millennia, only to be run down in suburbia by unconscious human beings.
I thought of the hapless plane-crash victims, obliterated in an instant by one of their own kind who had lost his way. And I realized that I, too, was painfully off-course, my armor cracked. I made a pact with myself anew that I would wake up, cast off the old script, and—in the words of psychotherapist and spiritual writer Thomas Moore—“enter my fate.”
Elizabeth O’Brien holds a Bachelor of Arts in English degree from the University of Tennessee/Knoxville; and a Master of Arts in Counseling degree from St. Edward’s University in Austin. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor (LPC-S), with a private psychotherapy and supervision practice in Westlake. She also created and runs a pro bono counseling program at the Town Lake YMCA in downtown Austin. Ms. O’Brien worked as a journalist for many years in Florida and New York City before moving to Austin to raise a family. She is the co-author, with her husband, photographer Michael O’Brien, of The Face of Texas (University of Texas Press), a book of portraits and stories of Texans, both famous and “ordinary.”
Visit her website: www.elizobrien.com
Sources: feather grass photo by Ryan McGuire, www.gratisography.com
Thank you for this beautiful essay. When I first heard about the plane crash, I burst into tears. My husband is a retired airline pilot and we both felt sick for days. I pushed that image out of my head and turned away from it. I was unable to process it and still haven’t been able to return to it. I appreciate your perspective and insight as you honored your emotions that day.
beautiful written, haunting and wise.
Agree! I’ve been thinking about this for several days.
The same tragedy — the German airline crash — was the subject of a heated battle with a dear friend (who loves a good argument). She and I debated for an hour the notion of pure evil versus evil acts perpetrated by wounded, tortured and broken souls. She contended that there is indeed pure evil in the world. I have never been able to accept that. There is, of course, no answer and no resolution to this question, at least for us mere mortals, but at the end of the session, neither one of us had changed our minds. And then I heard a discussion of the death penalty on a public radio station (Leonard Lopate on WNYC) with author Mario Marazziti (The Purpose of the Death Penalty and 13 Reasons to Abandon It) His clarity about why the death penalty is wrong amazed me. And articulated for me why revenge and taking a life in return for the loss of other lives is no answer. And then … I couldn’t help thinking about your armadillo. And though it made me so sad to read, it also made me so determined to celebrate life and goodness wherever we see it. It also made me very envious of your clients, for having such an insightful and honest therapist.
It’s good that we are talking about these things: good, evil, the death penalty, revenge, forgiveness. I sometimes feel as if I am too open, too exposed like this poor armadillo, that, like Elizabeth, my shell has cracked and I need to reset. I appreciate the reminder that there is reason to celebrate life, to seek answers, to remain determined in our present lives.