I was driving home from work and got distracted by a deer in the office park. When I turned out onto the main road a little brown bunny rabbit darted under my car and I couldn’t keep from hitting it. I was looking back and I couldn’t see it so I turned around to make sure I wasn’t leaving an injured animal to suffer but the bunny was clearly deceased. I am a traitor to all my bunnykind. What is even worse, I think you all know the terrible earworm that is taunting me (hint: think opera).
Even worse, it’s duck season.
Time for Hasenpfeffer!
Good thing your screen name isn’t psychochild.
Wait…I think if the rabbit dies that means you’re pregnant…
Are you sure there wasn’t someone in the bushes who threw the bunny our in front of your car? It may have been dead before you hit it.
(I saw that in a movie, once)
I blame the deer. It’s a conspiracy!
This morning I violently swerved to avoid a daredevil squirrel who darted in front of my car. He made it, so maybe this offsets your bunny manslaughter charge?
Morever, I also, most likely, saved a bunny in my back yard this morning. We have a herd of bunnyettes who live in the field behind the house and a foolhardy soul wander into my the yard – I saw him and herded him to safety before the lab and Staffie caught wind of a New Play Thing.
So, we’ve done a karma exchange.
Only in german could an exclamated name be reminiscent of a medieval butcher or its most impressive tools instead of a lightly marinated stew.
A short deer story: a colleague, who is truly a salt of the earth/human goddess hit a deer last year. Poor Bambi wasn’t all the way dead, but was on the way out.
Charlie stopped her car and sat with the deer and sang hymns to him as he slipped into the Great Ungulate Fields of Green.
Not the smartest thing to church an injured deer, but it still makes me verklempt when I think about it.
At least it was an accident.
<Trigger Warning: Animal Abuse>
I once worked at a construction company with some people who were just the scum of the earth. We had bunnies that lived on the hill behind the work yard and the workers would throw rocks at them for fun. One time this guy actually hit one. The bunny was just dragging itself along the ground. He had probably broken its hips or spine. I never once threw a rock, but I picked up a metal pipe and put the poor thing out of its misery. I got the fuck out of that place as soon as I could.
I always have to dodge quail and doves while driving out of my townhomes area. They’re always running across the road or congregating in the damn middle of it.
I routinely swerve (whenever possible) to avoid running over animals that dart into the road (including rabbits), but I have to say that creating bunny smush would leave only minute traces of guilt.
I might feel differently if the voracious little bastids hadn’t been chewing up my ornamental plants for the past couple of years.
The war continues.*
*I put up a photo in my subtropical border of Glenn Close in her most famous role, with the movie caption “I love animals…I’m a great cook” and an image of a bunny in a pot). Seems to have worked so far. 
Your poster name is particularly apt! (Jack rabbit)
We just finished a three week RV trip. I was appalled by the carnage on the roads and even saw a guy whose job it was to load dead deer into the back of his truck. He had about a half dozen when I saw him. Dead deer, elk, marmots, skunks, porcupines, squirrels, birds and unidentifiable critters by the hundreds. One deer was still thrashing out its last moments when we saw it.
The worst, though, was on a secondary road. As I topped a small rise, I saw a small animal in front of me and suddenly realized that it was a kitten; scrawny, tiny, mouth wide open in a yowl of terror. I swerved and missed it, and briefly saw it in my rear view mirror still standing there in the road. I have to choose to believe that it somehow got off the road and wasn’t flattened by the semi that was two vehicles back. Can’t get that image out of my head.
Jackrabbits aren’t rabbits, but hares, and I have it on good authority that jackrabbits are all notoriously speciesist.
Sometimes you really have to keep driving, and resist the urge to swerve, unless you are on the road alone.
Mike Rowe once featured a roadkill removal unit on an episode of Dirty Jobs
About two years ago, at my old place, I decided to pull my truck into the vacant lot next to my house. I ran over a nest of baby bunnies and killed all but one. I felt bad but I think the survivor went on to live a happy urban bunny life. Anyway…That’s what I tell myself.
Don’t beat yourself up.
I currently have a groundhog that’s made a home next to my air conditioning unit. The chipmunks keep stealing the bait out of the catch-em alive trap (without springing it) I’ve been setting for the groundhog. I may have to take extreme measures that I don’t want to.
I am also a horrible person. Today, I killed a macadamia nut tree. And it was planned.
Okay so nobody on Craigslist (or our zoos or conservatories) responded to my request that they adopt it so I sliced it apart (a messy, messy task) and is now buried in a recycling bag.
I feel for you. But it could be worse. I go to considerable lengths to avoid hitting anyone, and indeed in 36 years of driving I have only struck two animals. One of them, however, was a bunny who darted under my wheels during an early morning drive.
Easter morning.