What a shitty way to end Father's Day: shot a sick raccoon and had to talk to my daughter about it

My 4-yr old daughter and I spent a great Father's Day together. We had subs for lunch, went to the Minnesota Zoo, she got her face painted to look like a "rainbow tiger", played with other kids in the zoo's playground, and when my wife came home from work we went in the backyard to enjoy the gardens and watch our adorable flock of 5, one-month old chickens play in their chicken run.

As we're watching the chicks jump after bugs and scratch for worms, I see a really fly-swarmed, beaten-down raccoon come out of the evergreens of our neighbor's property 20 ft from us. We get our daughter inside, my wife's worried about rabid wildlife, and I grab my rifle to make sure it's not trying to scale the chain-link fencing to get the chickens. When I go back outside, it's just lying by the coop. Before I shoot it, it lifts up it's head and just gives me this look, like "I'm done." Afterwards, I could see it was just skin and bones and it's back was a solid mass of maggots and decaying tissue. Something, maybe a dog or coyote, had really torn into it at some point in the past week, but it managed to escape.

My daughter, being the way-too-smart-for-her-age 4 yr old that she is, asked if I killed the raccoon. My wife swore she didn't tell her what I was doing in the yard, but somehow she knew. I don't lie to my daughter, so I told her yes. Thus began a 20-min. discussion about life and death that was really uncomfortable at points, because she asked a LOT of questions, but in the end she seemed to understand.

Frankly, I feel like shit. I've hunted before, but this was different. Putting sick animals out of their misery sucks, especially when raccoons are probably my favorite wild animal. And having to talk to my daughter about death made it even worse. Hell, I had a hard enough time this winter telling her how all the garden plants died when it got cold.

Parenting is hard work, mainly because it's always throwing you situations you can never anticipate and prepare for.