Roadkill is far sadder than we let ourselves believe
Roadkill is unbelievably sad. The easiest way for me to deal with that sadness is to sweep it under the rug and never think about it. But, in reality, it’s haunting.
Define ‘needless death’, and roadkill is right there.
I’ve had this article churning in my mind for months. It’s one that I really wanted to do justice to. I’m going to sound like a real tree-hugger — and in a sense, I suppose I am.
But hear me out.
To my knowledge, I’ve never actually hit an animal so far in my driving life. That’s more because I’ve been lucky than anything else.
However, I have been a passenger when a small rodent, rabbit, or pigeon meets its ungainly end under the vehicle. It’s a jarring experience and one that most people have probably undergone at least once.
It unsettles me. And I suspect that if you look deep down in yourself, it probably unsettles you, too.
Anyway, the reason I decided to write this article.
About a year ago, I was driving along in Canada. Normal day. Nothing special. I forget where I was coming from or where I was going, but I was on a country road near our house in rural southern Ontario. A squirrel decided that moment was appropriate to dash across the road.
As they often do.
If it had maintained its speed and trajectory, its life would have come to a brutal and swift end under my driver’s-side tyres. Luckily for said squirrel, nobody was behind me, so I slammed the brakes on.
(For clarity, I wouldn’t have braked if there was somebody behind me because doing so would have risked causing a much worse accident.)
It froze and ditted around in decision before finally deciding to return the way it came, leaping into the embankment and disappearing into the trees.
I remember saying something along the lines of the following: “What a stupid squirrel. Why would you cross the road when you know I’m coming?”
But then I caught myself. Because squirrels have been walking around this part of the world for, well, ever. They’re literally native to this part of the world (grey and black squirrels, that is).
And then, after existing here for thousands of years (and thus thousands of generations), we suddenly built a road through their forest and swamp. I don’t know when exactly that road was built. The earliest, relatively primitive infrastructure was probably laid around 150 years ago, about the same time this area was populated by Europeans.
Even then, the vehicles travelling on it would have been decidedly slower.
So, the age-old question is: Why did the squirrel cross the road? And if it had been killed in the process, whose fault is it? The squirrel’s? Mine? Or ours, in general?
Just to point out, this problem is by no means limited to North America. Anywhere with roads or any sort of vehicular transportation leads to roadkill. Even the flocks of geese that become ground-up meat when they fly into jet engines should count in this list.
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On that note, what do we think of when we hear about geese being sucked into engines in a so-called ‘bird-strike’? Usually, ‘Stupid geese!’ — right? Because they probably intentionally flew into that engine? Because they ruined the plane and might have even caused a delay for some of the passengers. Most people don’t think, ‘The poor geese. We’re in their space and we killed them.’
I’ve had other close calls, too. Just over a year before the squirrel incident, I was driving near Coventry in England when a young fawn stepped out of the woods and straight into my path. Again, nobody was near me, but this time, I was doing about 60 mph (97 kph), which was far too fast to brake in time.
Instead, I swerved. That was the first and only time I felt the Corsa’s electronic stability control system actively working to prevent a rollover.
I was fine. The deer was fine. I carried on with my life and it, I hope, carried on with its.
Again, though, my first instinct was to blame the deer. I decided that wasn’t fair once the adrenaline wore off a little.
On one occasion, a few years ago, back in Canada, we were driving home in the dark when the headlights revealed a grisly scene.
A raccoon was lying in the middle of the road. Its back end had clearly been run over, its less broken and its guts on the road. Terribly, it was still alive.
Thanks to the terrible headlights, I didn’t have time to brake, but I did straddle the tyres around the animal so I wouldn’t hit it again. Perhaps it would have been kinder to finish it off, but that’s not what my instincts told me to do.
Rightly or wrongly, I made the decision to carry on. I had no weapons with me to do the merciful thing and end its suffering. Besides, I don’t know if I had the heart to do it.
However, I still remember the look on that poor thing’s face as it looked up into my headlights, clearly beyond help.
Ooph. Hard-hitting, that.
This article isn’t intended to be about solutions, although I’ll write another to address that in the future. No, what I really want to highlight is the blame game.
In the Garden of Eden, God asked Adam why he ate the fruit from the one tree that he’d been explicitly told not to. Adam blamed his wife, Eve. When God asked her why she ate, Eve blamed the serpent (snake) who planted the thought in her head.
The blame game is a natural human trait. And it’s awful.
Our first instinct is to blame the animal, the victim. Which is quite messed up. I won’t extrapolate that disgusting principle into human cases. Still, you can see where that mindset leads and how responsible it is for so many of the world’s intrinsic problems and dangers.
Changing instincts requires practice. So, the next time you see a squirrel cross the road, don’t blame it. It was here first. It lives in the natural world; we live in a cushy version, destroying God-given habitats and life in exchange for greater comfort. In fact, if the squirrels crossing the roads could think, one might argue that they have a much greater case for judging us than we do them.
But they can’t. And for now, our lives are dependent on travel. That won’t change, at least not anytime soon.
If the page has accomplished anything, I hope it encourages us to embrace compassion and pity for animals killed in the name of… what? The relatively random movement of people? Getting to work on time? Texting at the wheel, even?
One day, I hope it changes for good.
