I pulled out of my driveway this morning, tooling down the road on the way to the highway, and suddenly GA DUNK-DUNK!! WTF was that??? I kept rolling while looking in my rearview, and eventually it came into view- a little pile of chipmunk in the middle of the street. “Oh, damn. Shit.”
I briefly considered stopping and going back, but figured there was nothing I could do for it. I wasn’t about to perform CPR, and I also wasn’t about to make sure the little guy was fully dead so it wouldn’t suffer- I’m quite certain I wouldn’t have been able to complete the job if I discovered it was still alive. So I kept driving.
But for the next 30 minute drive, and still at this point almost 2 hours later, I feel like I abandoned the little guy.
Yeah, I would have run over it again, too. I have done this in the past when I’ve hit animals.
A couple of years ago, Hubby and I were driving at night, and hit two juvenile raccoons who dashed out into the road together. One was apparently killed on impact, but the other . . . wasn’t. I had Hubby turn around and go back to hit them again-- it was the only humane thing we could do to end its suffering.
Not too long ago, I was driving somewhere when a chipmunk ran from the side of the road right into the rear tire of the car in front of me, then kind of bounced off near the edge of the road. I stopped and got out to see if it was still alive, thinking I would move it off the road so it wouldn’t be hit again. It was still alive, and kind of twitching. I didn’t want to leave it for fear it would twitch itself right into the road again, so I picked it up and put it on the floor of my backseat. I continued to my destination, and when I got back into the car a few minutes later, I couldn’t find the chipunk. Turns out, he’d recovered from being hit and was perfectly fine, although confused as to where he was. Since I was going back the same way, I let him out at the same spot I’d picked him up.
So maybe your chipmunk wasn’t hurt, just stunned, and he’s happily chasing other chipmunks right now!
I hope so. The thought of backing over it with the express intent of crushing the remaining life out of it kind of sickens me. I think that if I did that, upon hearing the crush of its little body under my wheels, I’d puke up my breakfast.
That’s a pretty funny story though. I expected you to say that you never found him, and the mystery of the missing chipmunk remains to this day.
Yesterday morning I heard a loud thunk against the front window of my house. I looked out to see a robin flapping around on the ground, his head was twisted about 180 degrees to it’s body. I had to whack it with a shovel a couple of times before it stopped flapping and I deposited it in the trash. My wife was kind of upset but as I told her, it was just the natural selection process at work.
I remember once when I was about 7 I was playing in the yard and saw a chippie dash across my neighbor’s lawn and hide behind one of the rear tires of his truck. Not a few minutes later, my neighbor came out and got in the truck and started it up. The chipmunk just sat there on his hind legs, paws against his chest. I thought he would take off as my neighbor began to slowly back up, but he just sat there as the tire rolled slowly towards him. It bumped him and he toppled forward and fell on his nose. Still he didn’t move! I just stared, horrified, as the tire rolled right over him and left behind a messy pile of chippie with one paw sticking up in the air, twitching. I was pretty traumatized by that.
Chances are, if it didn’t take off, it was dead. Very often badly hurt animals will run, even when they really shouldn’t be able to.
I had a squirrel incident once, but I didn’t kill him. Didn’t even hurt him. Talk about perfect timing…
I was about seventeen and I was driving through Stanley Park. All of a sudden this big grey squirrel came zipping across the road right in front of the car. It disappeared under the hood, between the front tires. I looked straight down out of the open driver’s door window, just in time to se the little guy come out right under me and head for the bush. He’d actually made it beween the front wheels and had on enough speed to come out between the front and rear driver’s side wheels, unscathed. :eek:
Must have been hard to run that fast with horseshoes up his butt!
