I accidentally ran over a squirrel last week

[NNN0LHI]

A bunch of them were out in the road eating hedge apples so I was gong extra slow, when the little motherscratcher darted right in front of my tire as I was going only 25 or 30 MPH. I still think about it. And I am still sick about it. Real sick. How the fluck does someone shoot a wounded human being in the head and still be able to live with them self? Are there a lot of people around capable of committing such acts on another human being without it bothering them? Am I the odd one here?

Don

[candy]

1. They appear to be suicidal------I asked a professional naturalist once

about squirrels always running in front of cars. Her answer----"Because they are stupid"

Don't feel badly,you couldn't avoid it.

[procrastinator]

4. Remember the Geico commercial

Where the 2 squirrels hi-five each other after causing a car to wreck?

Sometimes I'd swear that's true....

[candy]

7. A very funny commercial!!!! n/t

[MuseRider]

2. Me too NNNOLHI.

I always feel so badly no matter what it is. I have been hit by a bunch of birds this summer for some reason. Tears, chills and it does not go away for a while. I don't know how anyone kills anything and I don't know how they will ever live with themselves after they have. My Golden Retriever has wanted a squirrel all her life, well she got one last week and showed up with it having death throes in her mouth. It took me a week to be able to really feel good about her again.

[jsascj]

3. This may sound awful but...

I can't bear the thought of killing a deer BUT

When I almost hit one of THEM, I found myself thinking "The hunters are slacking off".

[Blue in a Red State]

5. I just hate that feeling

A seagull smacked into the windshield years ago and really traumatized me. I still get really upset when birds fatally whack themselves against the windows of this house. Not odd at all...

[arwalden]

6. Don...

:hug:

[MotownLew]

8. Astounding wisdom from a seven year old...

As my son and I were driving down a substantially rural road in our fairly populated township, we saw three dead squirrels one after another.

He sat silent for a quarter mile and then said "Dad... Sometimes squirrels make very poor decisions."

I held a straight face for a good five seconds. In the year since, it has become his tagline; i.e., "I get no respect."

[Lefta Dissenter]

9. I'm sorry

I know how it feels to not be able to let that go.

As to the rest of your post - I have thought of that constantly when people discuss the possibility of a draft. I have a 23-year-old son who became a vegetarian in his junior year of high school, because he couldn't stand the thought of contributing toward the 'animal murder' industry (his words, not mine).

I have a 20-year-old daughter who works for our equine vet and has been our primary animal caretaker since she was three years old. She has spent her life rescuing mice and other little creatures, helping to birth out baby llamas, and taking care of various kittens, puppies, horses and anything else you can think of.

Imagine either one of those kids being sent off to kill actual human beings. It's beyond my comprehension.

[barb162]

10. so did I about a month ago; I was traumatized, got out of the

car. Its back leg was broken and I called Animal Control. I couldn't leave it there like that...it was pulling itself by the front legs back to the grass. I still feel very bad about it. It was the first time I ever hit an animal. This squirrel was playing with another in a big tree and then the one ran into the street. I swerved and was going very slow but it made no difference. One second they are playing and the next second they are in terrible pain or dying and they don't know why you did this to them. The squirrel was so scared as I was putting a towel over it until AC could come and get it. It is a horrible experience to hit an animal. Pitiful to see them suffer

[Jersey Devil]

11. I had a squirrel for a roomate in college - Some party guy!!

[RushIsRot]

12. My experience has been that...

squirrels do not see well close up. I suspect it did not see your vehicle at all. You did nothing deliberately. I'm sorry you had the experience, but squirrels are "squirrelly." Stop punishing yourself for their deficits.

[DemoTex]

13. I'll try again, Don. First time missed. Sorry!

I am sickened, too, by that horrible "thump" or "thump-thump" when I hit an animal on the road. I cannot tell you how many times, up here in the mountains, I have come to a near stop for a squirrel, or opossum, or skunk, or turkey. Fortunately, there is absolutely no traffic to cream me from behind. When I do hit one of them, I am sick for days.

That too is the spectra of Vietnam, and the subject of some of my latest short stories. They will be collected into a novel at some point, if I endure, and will fall in a genre somewhat between Larry Heineman's Paco's Story and Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army. But, bad luck to talk about a work-in-progress. Just work! is my writing motto.

Fallujah is another thing altogether. This is not road-kill. Nor is it cut-and-dried homicide. We tapped danced around My Lai and never called it for what it really was. Thanks to Seymour Hersche that we ever found out anything at all. Maj. Powell was too busy and too successfully covering up the massacre in Pinkville on March 16, 1968. Ah, did he learn his lessons well. Oh, the term that best describes My Lai? WAR CRIME.

That is where we find ourselves in Fallujah. Gunshots from one Marine patrol in a mosque. A second Marine patrol rushing in.

"What's going on," Eltee says. "Didja shoot anybody in the mosque?"

Then the Eltee and his back-up unit enter the mosque, with an NBC news team following. The scene is as smoky and surreal as any from the Hue City battle half of Full Metal Jacket. Even on a TV screen eight time zones away, it reeks with pure hellish fear.

Young men should not have to do this. But they are there. They are in the mouth of the cat of death all of a sudden.

"The motherfucker isn't dead! He is playing dead!" we hear. The Marine puts his weapon to his shoulder, we see in the smoky room (why is it smoky? Other executions?). No, we say, we cannot witness another My Lai on the evening news. But we do. And no one says shit.

OK, back to the Marine after he raised, aimed, and committed himself to kill a cowering, severely wounded human being. This is the crux of what Don and I abhor (I think, and speaking for Don without his input, but he can change it with addendums). This young Marine, screaming, wounded in the face the day before, points his weapon towards the head of an unarmed, wounded young male.

Was he a booby-trap? My hurtin' face says yes! But. But!! That first patrol just went in and shot up the place. Shot this guy. Didn't they check for booby-traps? It is, after all, their job.

Slight pressure, BRASS (breath, relax, aim, slack, squeeze). Pow! Pow? That was the gun. Thunk! Thunk, those were the brains spilling from an alive man.

Bring 'em on.

Mac

[signmike]

14. Deer Alerts

Or Animal Alerts - they are little plastic gizmos you get at auto parts or sporting goods stores for about $4 a pair and you glue them onto your car someplace where the wind will blow through them. They make a supersonic whistle. I love animals. I got real tired of having to drive 25 miles an hour all the way to Idaho and back with deer and cattle giving me the fantods on country backroads -- I put a pair of those on my truck 15 years ago and NO ANIMALS have run in front of me since -- not even the millions of squirells and 'possums we have here.

[HEyHEY]

15. I ran over one this morning

I tried to swerve but then he ran right into my tires....poor guy