Nobody ever says much about the pet kill when they’re in the car. Sometimes, a traveler with a heart will mutter an ‘awwww’ at the corpse of someone’s cat or dog, but for the most part, it seems as though a silent cringe tenses at the shoulders of the bystanders or by-travelers as they pass such a dead animal.
When I was 16, my mother made me get my license. She pretty much abducted me from all my previous plans and drove me to the licensing place. A few weeks later, when I was leaving the school on a Friday amidst the rush of other shouting high school students, the smell of burnt rubber, the squealing of tires, a black cat crossed my trajectory. A pile of teenage traffic behind me, I mentally froze as I was speeding down the suburban road, unable to take my foot off the gas pedal. I wavered in my steering trying to straddle the little cat, his pleading, stunned green eyes looking up to recognize a red 1989 Honda Prelude zooming at him, but it was too late.
The all too familiar and tragic “thump-thump” left me clenching the wheel, one eye still open and searching the rear-view mirror for the remnants of the cat. Half of him remained standing, half of him flattened – he was dragging himself off the road. I even caught a glimpse of a few gasping walkers who had seen the incident happen, but I could not bring myself to stop. Again and again, I told myself there was no little girl waiting for her little injured black cat to come home –it was probably just a stray.
Why was it that I visibly cringed, and I evaluate my maneuvers of that day even now with criticism as that’s the only domesticated critter I’ve ever mowed over in my car. I don’t review hitting squirrels or rabbits with such distress. I dare say I take some pleasure in hitting the occasional tree rat because they infest my neighborhood.
At a dinner with a friend, I mentioned having seen several dead dogs along the interstate on my trip to visit her in Allentown. An animal lover and a vegetarian, she remarked that she says a prayer for every dead animal she sees at the side of the road – domesticated or otherwise – but that she takes extra care to pray for the domesticated animals. Nevermind the fact that this woman probably spends more time praying than driving on long trips, but why do these domesticated animals fall so near and dear?
There’s nothing quite so chilling as seeing man’s best friend lying, somewhat crushed, next to highway 9. Has nobody noticed he’s missing? Or is there is little boy wondering the neighborhood, posting signs on every streetcorner and knocking on neighbors doors?
It seems to me we care the most for the things that affect us most immediately. It is the dog and the cat which greets someone when they come home if there is nobody else there to greet them –not a possum or a rabbit or a squirrel. We see these animals in such quick passing most of the time that we rarely notice them when they’re alive and give them a shorter shrift when we pass their decaying bodies on the roadside.
Sometimes I want to travel the countryside with a shovel and bury all of these little critters in “Johnny Appleseed” style. Of course, then the little boy or the little girl pining for their missing pet would never discover that they’re Fluffy or Fido has been mowed over by a passing vehicle, but maybe it would be better that way.
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