the time clock

sometimes i do wonder if there is some kind of time clock punched into all of our lives or if there is some kind of celestrial control center managing the earthly playing time on all of our lives.
peace and quiet were commercial meat birds, how did they and their dead tiny companion end up left all alone and abandoned in a cardboard box on a gas station tarmac?
why did just one die before their rescue? why did peace die at 8 months of age? why did quiet just barely make it past his very first birthday?
what human hand reached in to stop them from reaching certain death thru culling or slaughter and yet all of them still died tragic and early and unexpected deaths?

see..i don't get this. i understand the risks of rescue commercial birds growing too large for their bones and their hearts. i understand that commercial birds are culled by the millions when barely hours old, and i understand that if they survive the culling and don't die from disease or overcrowding in the commercial barns...they will for sure die in the slaughter house./ and if the are rescued, they still will die young because of the genetic engineering and growth hormones forced them to grow too big, too fast.

but i don't understand why 2 made alive out of the box and the third one did not. i don't understand why once the two survivors reached sexual maturity, mating together would shatter a leg beyond repair...and i don't understand how the last duck, barely a year old, was still slaughtered in the end, except by wildlife instead of man.

that raccoon could have just as easily gotten into edwina's pen...why was it quiet's he chose?

it all just seems like too much of a coincidence to me..like those ducks were all given x amount of time to live and nothing was going to change that, at least not for long.

there are a long list of others, behind these three ducks...animals who over the years we rescued..animals without a chance of survival, who did in the end survive.

there was wolfman jack....the oddest looking and tinest kitten that i had ever seen..dying of liver disease. he in the end did not die from his disease..it was some kind of miracle that he just seemed to outgrow his illness. i wanted to keep him, but i placed him in a very good, animal savy, indoor only home..only to find out later that before 2 years of age, he had become not only an in and out farm cat but in the end coyote food.

there was that little feral kitten...i can't remember her name....rescued from a life on the streets who in the end probably did die on the streets anyway when she escaped from my house before she was tamed.
there was radar, kai, bj, todd, the 3 classy chicks and all of the others who were rescued far too late to save.

so i am having trouble understanding sometimes...what is the point? do all of us have a time clock built in that we are allowed to live by and once the time is out, one way or another, today or tomorrow really does not matter....it's the end of the game?

if this is the reality..then we can't ever win...so what is the point in even trying when all of the cards are stacked against us? we might as well just give it up and die with the original plan.

i do understand that some of these animals did have a good bit of life before their clock ran right out...i get that peace and quiet and those classy chicks really did enjoy themselves for a while.

but at what cost? not just the cost of food and housing and wages and medical care..but the cost to those who end up caring about them? the cost to the ones who yesterday morning had to witness his death and find all of quiets parts so he could be respectfully cremated like all of our passed saints.

there is a cost in rescue to the humans who do this every day...not just the expected stresses and overwork..and even the occasional bruised or broken heart...but the dark side of rescue that has to be lived thru too...the insanity, the hopelessness, the violence..physical or emotional, that we are sometimes the victims of....

i just feel like the whole thing is just grossly unfeeling and unfair....and i wonder what is the point in trying so hard if the game is already fixed and decided and no one gets to beat the odds in the end?
if all of us are predeterminedly stamped with a L for long life or a S for soon death...what is the purpose of all of this anyway?
ko could have her weekend to spend with her family...mo could be out on the dykes with her dogs...tammy could be with her neice and nephews..laura could be walking hers and other dogs...brenda and erin and helga and everyone else, could be pottering around at home doing their own things...jenn and i could go saturday shopping at the mall if we wanted to.

so what are we doing here anyway?

if it all was so easy..if i wasn't sick inside most of the time because someone is mad at me and being unkind, if the vet bills were not growing so big that the totals completely terrify me, if i wasn't worried about scraping together enough money for shavings, for hydro bills, for canned food for the house guys..if i wasn't hurting from watching dogs like bibi, like pixie try to adjust...or even sweet baby ziggys, or blind unlucky luckys who will die soon, no matter what.....like seeing in my head... poor ko and wendy and mo and i think erin too...picking up beloved peices and scrubbing quiet's blood and flesh from the wire of his pen...

this was not supposed to be rescue, and yet it apparently is.