What would you do?

[urbpan]

Imagine you are driving along a pretty busy highway and you see a badly injured animal in the road. Its innards are out a little, but it's alive and conscious. For the sake of the example, the animal is one that is common, but not invasive, like a possum in the eastern US or a red fox in the British Isles or Europe (can't think of an example for Australia, but you get the idea, right?)

What do you do? Do you move the animal off the road (with a shovel or something so you don't get bit)? Do you try to run the animal over and kill it more quickly? Do you try to kill it with something in your car (a shovel, some other tool)? Suppose it's a weekend or at night, and you can't get a hold of a rehabber, vet, or animal rescue org, what then?

Many of us have experienced something close to this, and I'd guess that most of us didn't feel any better after the experience.

Your thoughts?

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

this is a good reason to have a nice heavy shovel in the back of your car.

[candent.livejournal.com]

I agree with your thinking, however, I think it would be difficult for me to actually make use of the shovel. I've never actually been in that situation though, so who knows.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

i would/could totally do it - especially in a situation as is described in the OP.

[candent.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised, you seem like a strong/practical person.

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

i saw a crushed animal in the road once. it was early afternoon, and i could tell from some way off that half of it was flattened and the other half still moving. i slowed the car down to give myself a few seconds to think, and then i put it out of its misery. and then i pulled over and cried for a few minutes.

i still get weepy when i think about it. which is one of the ways we know humans are weird, because i'm not opposed to hunting or anything, and i still think i did the right thing.

[grace-batmonkey.livejournal.com]

Definitely depends a bit on the type of animal and how much I would have to do to kill it. I don't believe I would be able to run it over again, but I have done the following:

1. Plank to transport out of road, large friend with plank to put out of misery, covering of sand, gentle details of mound contents on piece of plywood we found just in case family came looking (doberman, found horribly injured on beach road as we were on our way to a bonfire back in the late '80s)
2. Helpless tears (kitty cruelly hit by car who aimed for it as I watched one night outside my apartments in Dallas; followed car for a while but it did no good)
3. Towel, kitty kennel, vet, new parent for last year of her life (HBC [hit by car] cat found by my car one morning; she lost an eye and the sight in the other as well as her hearing; after treatment was secured, we found out her original owners were irresponsible fuckwits, making it easy to let the major donor for her care take her home)
4. Shovel to move, no other effort made (baby mole found near car when leaving work one day)

So, my usual approach is to at least move the creature out of the road with my military folding shovel. If I can see a way that the injury could be rehabilitated, I've got gloves, blankets, and rope in the boot for wrapping up even angry/strong patients. If I don't, I've got plastic bags and towels for letting the last few seconds be a bit more gentle.

[(Anonymous)]

Innards out, but alive and conscious? When I dealt with it before, I put it out of it's misery the most humane way I could find. Large rock, quick and steady.

[http://users.livejournal.com/purplebunnie_/]

So many variables! Ok, if it was a "critter", I'd likely put it out of it's misery, unless the wound was such that I felt I could help it heal. In that case, I'd call a couple particular amigas who are good at fixing living things. However, if it was a deer or other larger game creature, I'd put it out of it's misery, throw it in the trunk, and have fresh meat for dinner.

Of course, kill the thing as quickly as possible. Unless I think it can survive.

[dragonwrites.livejournal.com]

with its guts already out, my thought would be euthanasia (by shovel) as the kindest option for a wild creature. that said, i've never killed anything bigger than a roach. so i don't know if i could actually do it.

[carbonunit.livejournal.com]

Good Australian example would be a wombat. They move slowly and feed at night so they're always being hit by cars.

I would kill it quick as possible. If the innards weren't out I would try and rescue it or at least get it off the road, but if there's internal injury it's lights out time.

[shadefell.livejournal.com]

I'd try to kill it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

[mellawyrden.livejournal.com]

I don't know, it's kind of a nightmare scenario of mine. I would want to euthanize it painlessly but don't know if I could hit it hard enough to do a quick job, or if my aim with the car would be good enough. If I had a gun I would use that but I wouldn't be able to look. I'm not good with atrocities.

[buboniclou.livejournal.com]

Call me a pussy, but when I found a cat like that (no guts out, but bleeding from the mouth) I didn't have the heart to put it out of its misery (also I was about 12), so I held it til it died so it at least had some comfort. I did try calling the emergency vet service, but it was too late.
Would I do the same today? Unfortunately, probably so. This is why I can never be a vet.

[principito.livejournal.com]

Found a baby kitty once like that and tried to put it out of his misery but I found out I have no guts, so I wrapped him up in a t-shirt and comforted him till he died. To this day I feel guilty for not killing him, he suffered way too much in the process of dying.

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

I got out and looked for the deer, but it was dark and snowing and I couldn't find it. Not sure what I would've done if I'd found it.

I picked up the mourning dove from the street, wrapped it in a t-shirt, drove it home, and called around until I found a vet with a rescue organization thingy. Turned the bird over to them; they said months later it had been rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

The cat had been hit by a car, evidently, and had managed to crawl off the road and up under the shade of a tree. Insides were still inside, but the cat was twitching in a very alarming way and didn't seem able to see; flies were already gathering. I cried and sat with it and petted it very gently and talked to it until it stopped breathing. Then I covered it with a towel (held down by stones) until I could contact its owner (a neighbor).

The dog darted out so fast I only saw a blur going under my front tires. I felt the bump and stopped immediately, already shaken. It was near dark, and I saw a man standing on the sidewalk. I called to him that I thought I'd hit a dog, and he agreed, went into his garage, and came back with a cardboard box and an old towel. I could barely see, and for some reason forgot to worry that the dog might bite me (and it didn't try). I realized my tire was still on the small dog's leg (shudder) - I hit it, but didn't run OVER its body. So I got back in my car - told the man I was NOT leaving the scene first - and slowly backed up about a foot. Then I scooped up the dog into the box and moved it off to the sidewalk, asked the man to watch it for a moment, and I started knocking on doors until I found the owner. She was much calmer about it all than I was - she informed me she was a Buddhist and already forgave me, and she could see I was a good person because I didn't have to stop, etc. We all got the dog into her car and she had ME drive HER car to a 24-hour animal emergency hospital. I cried the whole way, apologizing, with her beside me. It shivered but otherwise was still, and I could see a blood vessel had broken in one of its eyes. I feared massive internal injuries, or at LEAST a broken leg. Miraculously, the dog was fine and walking around the place within an hour or so.

All that said, I should probably keep a shovel in my trunk. I hope I'd never have to use it, but I THINK I could, if I had to. When innards are exposed, it's pretty much a done deal in my book. :(

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

this story makes me mad. does buddhism make you laissez faire with the lives that are entrusted to you?

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

Yikes, sure didn't mean to make you angry. I think she saw how upset I was (nearly hysterical, I admit), and she was trying to calm me down. She said she normally kept her dog inside, but she was in the process of selling her house, and her real estate agent must've accidentally let him out. She was popping some popcorn and she said he must've smelled it and was dashing back home - right in front of my car. She was incredibly kind, not laissez faire. How she could think of MY well-being after I'd just nearly killed her dog (so we thought at the time) was pretty amazing to me.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

oh no - that woman's attitude made me mad!

why was she not out looking for her dog?

it's funny to me that you always misinterpret the things that i write. i wonder why that is?

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

I don't know...I'm still confused now. :(

I got the impression she didn't even know it was out until I came to her door.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

that's so odd - i can't even imagine. :(

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

I did understand you weren't angry at ME, if that's what you mean. ?

Hard decisions

[(Anonymous)]

Was once in a horrible incident of auto v. raccoon, and I made myself run over the fatally injured and clearly suffering creature with my car several times. Crying & borderline hysterics back home. That happened almost 20 years ago and I STILL think about it sometimes.

Did this happen to you recently?

Re: Hard decisions

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Not recently. It happened to an lj friend.

Re: Hard decisions

[roaming.livejournal.com]

happened to me this past Friday. I'm determined to be more prepared for emergencies next time: I wasted a lot of time just dialing dead-end numbers. I also don't know if I could slam a heavy shovel down on an animal, but I guess if it's a choice between my squeamishness and the animal being in pain with no chance of recovery -- i.e., this possum had been hit/run over hard enough that the guts were pushed outside its belly intact -- it's a no brainer. (pun intended?)

I admit to being one of them citified, city-bred bleeding hearts who claim to "love nature" (and I feel I do), but actually have no real practical knowledge or experience with it as it actually exists. I have a Disneyesque vasline-coating on the lens. All spiders are Charlotte, all deer are Bambi, all rabbits are Thumper, all skunks are Flower. I can only hope that being aware of this prejudice I can keep it from running amok and find a balance back to something more realistic.

[bdot.livejournal.com]

i found a very injured bunny on the road once and brought it to an emergency vet clinic. they said the best was to euthanize it. then the vet tried to charge me an enormous amount of money. the billing person told me not to worry about the cost, tho.

[gribley.livejournal.com]

This is a topic I've wondered about before, and actually thought of asking you about. Keeping a shovel in the car is a great idea, except... I don't have a car. Smashing a poor woodland creature with a stick or rock is a bit too caveman for my taste, and I really don't know if I could do it. (This is why I don't eat meat -- I don't think people should eat meat if they couldn't raise and kill and dress the animals themselves, but that's another story.)

I did run into an injured squirrel recently in Brookline but did nothing; it was in the woods and seemed to be getting around a little and I didn't know how long it had been surviving. But this kind of thing haunts me. I once saw... well, I wrote and then deleted that sentence so as not to traumatize UP and CM and the rest of the dog lovers out there, but jeez, this kind of thing sticks with you.

I guess the big rock is the best solution. But that would be brutal.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Suffering wildlife is sad, but it happens whether humans cause it or not. A couple years ago I found a live but unmoving chickadee in the Olmsted forest--I decided then that it was none of my business, and left it there.

An injured pet is a very different circumstance, because someone loves it. You empathize with the suffering of the animal, as well as the emotional pain of its owners.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that a domesticated animal probably doesn't, I presume, have the same survival/coping skills a wild thing has by nature. We've bred it out of them? Or does it kick in in extremis?

For example, I know that injured animals are able to hide their pain/injury, to just push past it, so as not to appear vulnerable to predators. Similarly, I wonder if an injured wild animal experiences pain differently that WE do. I empathize with it because I put myself in its place and think "OW! SHOCK! FEAR! PAIN! HOW AWFUL FOR ME!" But the wild thing may have all its concentration on surviving, and not be self-referencing back emotional upset about being hurt the same way we do. So that maybe it's coping differently.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that a domesticated animal probably doesn't, I presume, have the same survival/coping skills a wild thing has by nature. We've bred it out of them? Or does it kick in in extremis?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I believe that the main difference between wild animals and domestics is that domestics have been bred to be less fearful of humans. The mechanics of this seems to be in amount of adrenaline produced in response to stimulus. What this means in the case of grave injury I don't know.

Even some domestic animals can be hard to diagnose because they still have the instinct to not appear vulnerable. I'm remembering here the rabbit that died at Drumlin Farm while I was there. He stopped eating one day and was dead the next. He was probably ill for some time, but it went undetected until it was too late.

But perhaps since rabbits are prey animals they are more likely to conceal symptoms. I know my dog Charlie does not conceal symptoms, but instead plays them up trying to convince me that he's dying and that I have to take care of him, even if it's just an acorn shell stuck on his toe pad. Dogs are sort of special, since they have become infantilized, and look to their human "parents" for the kind of resources that puppies look to their parents. (Licking your face in appeasement and to induce you to regurgitate food, for example.)

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

I've dispatched a couple of suffering creatures who were beyond hope. One was a cat who'd been hit and clearly had no chance. I ran over it and then made sure it was dead. I felt awful about it and I still wonder if I did the right thing even though I know I did. Another time I found some subhumans torturing an eel they'd caught. I was furious with them and the eel was really hurt so I picked up a big rock and smashed its head. Then I picked it up again and glared at them and they scurried away. I called the cops about a hurt deer and they came right away and shot it. They really seemed sorry about the whole thing too. And once in California I found a big snake that had been hit and was in the road, but I didn't know if it could get better and I was afraid it was venomous, so I used a really long stick and moved it off the hot pavement into a shady, cool place. I don't know if that was the best I could have done, but I was even more afraid of snakes then than I am now. I much prefer rescuing to killing injured animals, but sometimes it doesn't go that way. How do you kill a critter with a shovel?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I killed a rat with a shovel recently--it was staggering around looking unwell. I slipped it into a nearby paper bag from the recycling and brought the flat of the shovel down heavily onto its head.

With an opossum you could try to decapitate it, or crush it, but I've never done either, and I'd hate to underestimate the force needed.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

That's what I worry about: that in an attempt to dispatch an animal I'd only make it worse by not hitting hard enough, or in the right place, or both.

My ex-hubby the Country Boy knows where to take his bowie knife that he always has on him and slit a spinal cord at the base of a neck. But he's fearless with big muscles and more strength than any five men I know put together.

[vodkanoodles.livejournal.com]

i'm a sucker..

i know where all my local 24hr vet surgeries are.. and keep tools and a blankie in my boot at all times anyway..

i really dont' know enough about the innards of animals so wouldn't kill it myself but would pack irt up and bundle it off to hte vets..

(last time i did that though it was a cat, who ended up costing me a few grand and loving me for years.. i'm such a dog person though:)

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have it in me to kill the critter with an imperfect tool - I can't even kill bugs, the crunch of the exoskeleton just goes right through me. I can kill with a proper tool, but I don't have one.

Last time I saw something dead in the road, I was almost completely sure so I just called the local cops and they sent someone to deal.

Once, someone hit a dog right in front of my house; the city sent the crew and got it cleaned up very quickly. I was a bit thrown by the way they just hosed off the road into the storm drains - I always think "BLOOD! BIOHAZARD!"

So I would try calling the police or a less sentimental friend. Failing all that, I guess I kind of hope I could bring myself to drive my pocketknife between the vertebrae at the base of the skull, or slit the throat, but I don't know if I could. I hear novices are really bad at estimating the force you need to do something like that.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I've watched a lot of animals dispatched by experts using the right tools (in a veterinary setting), and even that can be tricky.

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've often been amazed at how fragile life is - it seems like a little splinter in the wrong place will kill ya dead. And then I've been amazed at how tenacious it is - a building can fall on you and a year later you can be dancing again.

[(Anonymous)]

A touching and difficult subject. Typically I feel so helpless/useless that I drive on, which feels horrible. I doubt I could use a shovel even if I had one. I did once hold a cat until it died, but I certainly wouldn't try that with a wild animal, who would not be comforted by my presence in any case.

I haven't got much to add, except that in the past year or so I've also been moved to offer a prayer. This surprises even me, because I'm not a religious person in any traditional sense.

I don't drive very much and so encounter these sorts of situations much less than I used to. Also it seems that NY state had tons of roadkill and injuries, whereas down here in the outskirts of the DC metro area I see far fewer dead animals on the road.

Thank you for asking this question. I love your blog!

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

I'd find an all night Veterinarian with emergency hours. They have those *here*, so they must have them where you are-

btw- Australian equivalent- Ring-Tailed Possum- happens *all the time*. You have to check the pouch for joeys...

Some animals are "easier" to kill than others

[roaming.livejournal.com]

Some years ago I was driving around the rotary on Memorial Drive that goes across to BU. A one-legged pigeon was hobbling across. I slowed down: the guy to my left deliberately speeded up and hit it, a look of glee on his face. (Why is is statistically always/usually *men*? Are hormones enough of an explanation?)

The bird was thrown to the side of the rotary, near the grass, and was wildly flapping the one wing that wasn't broken. I forced myself to drive around the rotary three more times to go over it to be sure it was dead.

Luckily, I was on the way to my shrink appointment, where I spent the entire hour blubbering about the cruelty of people. That the guy deliberately wanted to hurt the pigeon was worse for me than if the bird had been accidentally hit.

Re: Some animals are "easier" to kill than others

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Why is is statistically always/usually *men*?

Men are rewarded for using their physical strength, for being violent, and for using power over the less powerful. Men are punished for showing compassion, empathy, and restraint. (Speaking here of the cultural preparedness for manhood practiced by boys in middle and high schools.)