A couple of summers ago, a friend and I were out for a longer ride on a summer Saturday. We were in the north suburbs (Chicago) on a path that paralleled a wide road, four lanes and a turn lane, traffic doing 45-50 or so. As we were riding along, we saw a mother duck and half a dozen or so ducklings on the grass verge, and it looked like she was getting ready to lead them across the road. There was no way in hell they were going to make it without help, so I got off my bike and stood in the near lane (fortunately we were a ways down from the nearest traffic light, which had been red) waving at traffic as they began to cross. I could do this only as far as the middle of the road - trying to do this the whole way across would have put me in too much danger from the traffic on the other side. As they were halfway across the other wide of the road, a driver who obviously wasn’t paying enough attention just…flattened about half of them. Several ducklings were killed immediately, and one was, like your squirrel, gravely injured but alive, and could do nothing but quack in fear and pain. The mother was sort of running around in small, frantic circles and quacking. It was - and I don’t use this word very often - heartbreaking. The image stuck with me and still comes back from time to time, unbidden. There was nothing more I could do for them.
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Originally Posted by GH85Carrera
I was on the road that is a 45 MPH speed limit. I saw a squirrel that had just been hit by the car in front of me. The squirrel's back half was crushed, and he was using just his front legs to drag himself along. I aimed for his head and put him out of his misery.
Just a few days ago, a couple in a car on I-35 near Guthrie, OK hit a deer and it killed the deer, and disabled the car. For whatever reason they did not get pulled off the interstate. They got out of the car to inspect the damage, and they were hit by a truck, and it killed both of them. The interstate was closed for over 8 hours for the investigation and cleanup. Why they did not get off the interstate was never made clear in the news article.
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