2 days ago we found an injured cormorant near a water-side coffee shop we frequent, the local wildlife refuge told us how to catch it and where to bring it

the lil one had a broken wing and could not swim, dive or fly 

we watched it beg for food it did not want to eat / we saw it watch other birds fly and dive

after 2 hours of gently chasing it from dock to to beach to dock to beach, we got it in a box with a big fluffy blanket

we took it straight to our local wildlife refuge/rescue, in the car it nested but also struggled and was probably hurting 

the wildlife docs discovered that it was a juvenile bird and that it had a broken wrist and elbow--apparently, breaks in joints cannot be healed in birds / the lil one had to be euthanized 

i know i should not anthropomorphize wildlife, and that euthanizing it is less suffering than it starving to death slowly 

i also know i am endlessly sad that this critter was hungry and in pain with no context for its hurting--it wouldn’t have known why it hurt or why it was hungry like I know why I hurt or am hungry, it would have just been 

hungry 

hurting 

endlessly and without rest, no memory-like-human-memory of an injury or how its stomach was empty empty empty and why it could not dive like it so desperately wanted to

like it needed to

like it has to