Killing our Friends

Since I ride my bike a lot, I come across a lot of dead animals in the road -- "roadkill", a dismissive term if there ever was one. Earlier this year I got to the point where I couldn't pass by these carcasses of our fellow creatures anymore, so now I stop and bury them. I carry latex gloves in my bag or find a plastic bag on the ground nearby (sadly, these too are everywhere). I find a nice spot if I can, scoop out some dirt and leaves, pick up the critter by its tail, lay it in the hole, cover it with dirt and leaves and say a little benediction like, "Sorry, little buddy", then move on. Since I started doing this 8 months ago I've buried 26 animals: squirrels (lots of them), a possum, a jackrabbit, 2 rats, one deer (a beautiful two-point buck that I could only cover with boughs and leaves), one raven and two blue jays.

It was a blue jay that started this whole thing. One day as I habitually swerved around the dead blue jay in the bike lane I heard a bird singing in a tree directly adjacent to where the dead one lay, and noted that I'd never heard a bird singing there before (and I usually notice birdsong because it's something I really love). The next day riding in I saw the same dead blue jay and heard a bird singing there again! Well, that stopped me in my tracks. Had it been singing all that time, since the other one was killed? Was it singing for its mate, for its mother, for its child? I went back, found a bag, buried the dead jay and moved on. The next time I rode by that spot -- and every time since -- I've not heard a bird singing there.

It's intense and humbling to pick up a dead body. It's a powerful feeling to have a close encounter with a dead creature, to heft it and carry it and consign it to the earth. I don't think that the drivers who've killed these animals are always aware that they've killed or even HIT something -- a squirrel is nothing compared to an SUV doing 45 mph -- and I'm always hoping but not entirely certain that these critters die right after impact. Sometimes their expressions are anquished or strained, and sometimes what's left of them is just too gruesome to describe here. The one day I buried a beautiful black squirrel I noticed that its fur was very much like my pug Frodo's fur, and I had to sit on the side of the road and cry for a bit.