Roadkill

Of all the things that I've thought "I should put that in my blog" about, this is by far the most saddening. While I was driving home the other day from a visit with some family in the next city over, I spotted a dear sitting nearly motionless on the edge of the median. She was positioned just as if she were posing for a drawing in a children's book or one of those tacky figurines that your great-aunt twice-removed collects. Either way, the only movement I saw was the turning of her neck and head as she rocked it gently back and forth. It was like she was pointing at something. Once she caught my sight, I had naturally begun to slow down a bit just so I could see her. I did the exact same thing for accidents and fender benders. Here too, I knew something was terribly wrong although there was no obvious sign of any trauma. I could see the pain and fear in her eyes as I quickly pieced together that she had been hit by a passing vehicle.

I was travelling home with the intention of meeting a few friends for sushi but it seemed that I may have a slight change of plans for the evening. Several courses of action rushed through my brain. Keep going...but who would help her? Stop and try to load the injured animal in my compact car and rush her to a 24-hour vet...but my car was full of boxes for moving and I don't even know which vet to go to and could I afford to save a wild deer? Stop and stay with her while she took her last breaths...would she not feel threatened and possibly try to bite me? Call 911...would they even care? There had to be phone number for emergencies such as this.

One of the friends that I was to meet for dinner I likened to St. Francis of Assisi. He was a vegetarian (maybe a pescetarian, I can't recall) and had fostered unadopted dogs for quite some time. He had even adopted two of these dogs, one of which was a blind female pug that had been repeatedly bred and abused. So I quickly called him up to ask for his sage advice. Of course, he didn't answer so I turned around and pulled onto the median about 30 feet from the wounded deer. I figured any closer would scare her even further and any farther would be too far for me to carry her should I choose to attempt a rescue. As I got out of my car and slowly crept closer to kept direct eye contact with her. I could sense her fear along with her silent pleading. It was utterly gut wrenching. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a city truck pull up and park on the opposite side of the deer. Obviously, someone had already notified the appropriate authorities to the situation. Could it have been the person that had hit the animal? I couldn't immediately assess whether this situation would have made me less angry at the person that did this or more angry. But as the burly yet gentle looking man got out of his truck my mind switched to pondering what my new role would be now that he was here to take charge of the situation.

Neither of us had moved much closer to the deer. My trepidation was evident to him as his was to me. "Is there anything I can do to help?" I yelled. Without even approaching the animal, he quickly replied, "No, she's already to far gone. I have to take care of it but I appreciate you stopping." I knew that by take care of he meant destroy. The irony made me nauseous as did the knowledge of what would be happening in the moments to follow. I turned and got back into my car as my eyes welled up. I pondered what her injury could have been. Maybe she just had a broken leg. Surely she could have been rehabilitated if that were the case. He was just following protocol and that made me angry. I let out one burst of emotion and tears and pulled away. How would he do it? Again the possibilities played out in my head. Would he shoot her? Snap her neck? Gas her? I decided that he would most likely inject her right there with some 'humane' chemical that would stop her heart.

As I left the scene, I turned the volume on my CD player up louder than normal to help quell my emotions (an audiobook, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor). The effectiveness of this distraction left me almost as upset as the last two minutes had.