OT/OOC

What would you do?

My father was one to teach life lessons in bizarre fashion. But perhaps because they were strange, they've stuck with me. He showed me a summer's collection of newspaper articles of person after person being seriously injured or killed by swerving to miss a deer or other animal crossing the road. All of the people made the choice to try and save the animal, and sometimes it cost them their lives. He let me sift through these for a few minutes, and then told me in summary, "If the choice comes, have the strength to hit the deer. You've got a better chance of survival."

That didn't make me feel better on that very dark and stormy night when I was driving down the interstate at 60 mph when the deer stepped out of the median and into my windshield. But it did keep me from panicking and swerving to avoid it- had I swerved far enough to the right, I would have driven the car off a cliff, possibly killing myself and my spouse, napping in the car. Instead, I only inhaled sharply, and took my foot off the gas, turned on the 4-ways, and pulled over. I heard the sickening crunch of the cars behind us hitting the same deer. There wasn't much of it left. Nor was there a lot of my windshield or the entire left side of my car.

My father and I had a lot of long discussions about rabies and the best way to deal with it. He was not as bad as my aunt, who believed that all bats and racoons in a rabies infected area ought to be euthanized in an effort to control the disease. He did teach me the warning signs. Any racoon or bat or other nocturnal animal out in the daytime was likely to be infected and nearing death, and likely to be highly dangerous.

So what would you do, then, knowing this, if you saw a racoon trying to cross the road with another 3 hours of daylight left? Would you do as that strange man in the truck did, and swerve to hit it- hoping to kill it so it could not bite anyone? Would you stop and call the police and tell them there was likely a rabid racoon in the area, knowing that if you didn't have a way to contain it, they'd be sorting air and likely miss it? Would you swing back and try to hit again? Or get the gun out of your gun rack and actually shoot it? I am left wondering if he was trying to euthanize the animal in a painful way, or if he really took pleasure in trying to kill the beast, or was he trying to miss? I'll never know.

I am very glad that Jazz saw it and did something about it, no matter how unpleasant. There wasn't anyway to save that racoon, but because he called the cops, they kept it from biting any other animals or children in the area, and our neighborhood has many. Our dog was outside most of the day today- what if she'd been bitten?

I remember arguing once with my father about hunting. How I thought it was criminal that they were shooting deer. He had only tough questions for me. What do you do when there is nothing culling the herd and they die of starvation or are running across roads? Is it better to kill and eat them then, than have them suffer or possibly kill people in cars? I have changed my opinions on this now- I wish the hunters focused more on the old, the sick, and the young, like the natural predators do.

Suffering sucks.  ¶ 8:35 PM