This Woman Creates Beautiful Memorials For Dead Animals She Comes Across And Here Are 25 Of The Most Heartbreaking Ones

"Years ago, when I was doing my PhD research in the Peruvian Amazon, I found a field mouse outside my hut. He was clearly in some kind of distress. Maybe he’d been caught by a hawk and dropped? I don’t know. He was barely moving. I scooped him up and started to care for him as gently as I could. I took him everywhere with me, even to interviews. I fed him baby milk with a tiny blue ear dropper. For about a week, I watched him gain strength, and I started feeling confident he was going to be just fine, able to live on his own. Then one day, he started aspirating the milk through his nose. I had overfed him. Or I had fed him too quickly. He died in my hands. It was all so fast and awful and completely my fault. I was inconsolable. I could not stop crying. Days passed, and people started saying to me, “Amanda, he’s just a mouse!” and “They are everywhere. Why are you so upset?”
I understand what they meant. I get it. He wasn’t a rare or precious creature. He wasn’t a jaguar or a scarlet macaw or a giant otter. He was “just a mouse.”
But I also don’t get it. He was one mouse I cared for and loved. He was a sentient being, albeit a tiny one, with feelings and fears and pleasures and thoughts I could never know. He had a life. He was special. Because they are all special.
This little mouse is not that mouse from those many years ago in Peru. This is one I found in my yard in Colorado a few months ago. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he’d been caught by a hawk and dropped? It was too late to do anything. But I scooped him up and cared for him as gently as I could."

"We come spinning
out of nothingness,
scattering stars
like dust.
~Rumi
I found this baby in my yard last night. No visible wounds or marks. Now wreathed in the beauty of his too-brief life in spring."

"It’s been a day to honor the dead. We found this squirrel on the trail this morning. Her body was still warm. Maybe hit by a bike? I pulled her under a tree and circled her little body with beauty. No one who sees her now will dismiss her as 'just a dead squirrel.'"

"Every day. I’m sorry.
I found her just now, in the middle of a bright hot morning. She was in the far lane of a 6-lane highway, surrounded by suburban sprawl. Coyotes adapt so well to our concrete-and-cement, built-up spaces. They live among us, even when we’ve left them with so little. So little space to roam. Smart and fast as they are, it’s hard to beat six lanes. Do we really need so many?
I pulled her off the road, up a small hill, and over the railroad tracks to the shade of a tree. I, she and I, must have been a sight. It’s ok. I want people to see. How many drove by and left her there?
These pink flowers were everywhere. They made her only more beautiful."

"We found her on the side of the road. We couldn't leave her there. Cars and trucks were barreling past at 70 mph, within inches of her body, rustling up her still-soft fur. She deserved our concern and care. Some dignity in her death. She was just a fawn, still with her spots."

"Rest In Peace, sweet grackle. It might seem like you are just one of countless, anonymous grackles in Austin. But we noticed you, and we honored you in your death."

"Where I live in Texas, armadillo jokes are as common as armadillos. There’s one about the chicken crossing the road “to show the armadillo how it’s possible.” There’s one about armadillos being “Texas speedbumps.” I get it. It’s ok to make light of dark things, to find humor in sadness. It’s kind of a beautiful, funny thing humans do.
But I’ve heard so many people say they’ve never seen a live armadillo in Texas, only dead ones on the road. That gives me pause. How many nonhuman beings do we see only when they’re dead? And then do we even see them at all?
Armadillos make me love living in Texas. Every time I see one, a live one, my heart skips a beat. They are like magic to me. The dinosaur tail. The squiggly ears. The exquisite armor--like tiny, noble knights. If only their armor could protect them from our cars.
My dear friend found this one on his bike ride to work (yes to biking to work!), and he texted me. Maybe that seems weird--a friend writing to tell me he found a dead armadillo. But he knew I’d want to go pull him from the road, give him a proper farewell, worthy of a knight.
Within minutes of circling him with beauty under a tree, a lone vulture came, ready to complete the cycle.
I’m sorry, little one. I wasn’t laughing."

"'Just another dead raccoon on the road.' No. They are all beings, with lives and life stories. She was still young, no visible wounds or injuries. She was killed at dusk. Maybe she was crossing the road at the first moment of cooling in this record-breaking heat. Her gray at dusk. I'm sure she was invisible to the driver. I'm sorry, little one."

"Matilda and I found another coachwhip on the road. It's heartbreaking to see a creature so strong and vital, looking somehow tossed aside, like trash on the pavement. I can't bear it. I like to think this is one way to show respect for all the living ones, even if it's too late and meaningless for this one.
I’m sorry. I hope in some way, on some level, some plane of existence, you feel honored now, too."

"Matilda and I found this little one on our walk. She seemed healthy, sweetly chubby even. No visible wounds. Maybe only in my heart."