Poor Will (TMI - animal) in just testing

He called me as soon as I got out of work.

I don’t know if you guys know or have the same issue but NJ is roadkill city. Squirrels, woodchucks, possums, racoons and deer - to name the most frequent ones. Circle of life, we also have birds like vultures who are happy to have it.

We’ve all seen animals get hit and many of us have hit animals. I LUCKILY have not, I really try to watch for those crossing and drive slower when on smaller roads - but probably 99% of the people I know have hit something in their lifetime. Even Will. Even with me in the car once! He hit a possum with me in the car, but we were in his big boat car on a windy one lane road in the dark in PA and by the time we took the curve the possum was in the middle of the road and he’d crash if he slammed on the breaks so we had to hit it and just hoped that his large boat car killed it immediately so there was no suffering.

No one intentionally runs these things down, their just dumb and slow and sometimes in the dark or coming around a curve they get hit. So I guess you become desensitized to it. And you assume, or hope, that they die on impact.

Well Will was driving to work yesterday and saw one of those cute fuzzy brown woodchucks get hit - which didn’t faze him - but what did mess him up is that the animals was still moving after it got hit. And it broke his heart to know that the animal was in pain.

LUCKILY he saw the person stop and put on gloves and head back towards the animal. That’s amazing. People never stop…

When wildlife gets hit, there’s really not much to be done. Not many vets take in wildlife and they will charge you to euthanize it, which can be hundreds of dollars. I think the police only come out for deer because they’re big enough to cause accidents on the road for people if they stay in the middle, or God forbid are still struggling in the road. They’ll shoot a deer to put it out of it’s misery but I don’t know what they’d do for a woodchuck - if anything.

I can only imagine the guy that hit it at least had the decency to take it out of the road so it didn’t have to die in a panic with cars whizzing by. Maybe hide it in a bush so at least it felt safer?

I’ve even heard of one person say that if you see something get hit and it’s struggling, you should hit it too - just to kill it so it’s out of it’s misery.

I do agree with that although I couldn’t do it.

Once I saw a bird flopping on the road. I imagine it got hit and only had one working wing so it couldn’t fly. I wasn’t going to hit it but I did turn around and I was going to pick it up and attempt to get it to a vet but by the time I had turned my car around to get back to it, it was dead. It probably was frantic and had a heart attack. I had also already called one vet who said they wouldn’t take wild animals so I didn’t know what I was going to do with it.

And that’s what I told Will - these small wild animals have heart attacks pretty easily. I imagine that even though he saw it struggling - it wouldn’t be struggling for long before just having a heart attack from the stress and panic and probably died soon after it got hit.

He said he cried all the way to work and I cried hearing the story and he knew there was nothing he could do so he kinda got over it a little by the time we got off the phone.

I don’t know how his day at work was. I hope he could get over it and it didn’t effect his driving or anything. I didn’t bring it up the rest of the night cause I didn’t want to bring it to the front of his mind while he was trying to forget what he saw.

Sometimes I hear people talk about hitting deer and they’re all mad about the damage to their car. And it’s like OMG are you not thinking about it from the animal’s side at all? The panic and pain - and you’re worried about the mechanic’s bill?

But I also know that these poor animals are so dumb. I don’t know what calls them to cross a high way. I don’t know what makes them think they’re fast enough to make it. It makes me mad that they’re so dumb. Will’s actually worried I’d drive off a cliff just to not hit something and he, of course, would rather have me alive than a deer, you know?

I dunno - it was just a bad day for Will and I hope nothing like this happens again.