*sniff* I ran over a squirrel

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I was driving through rural Wisconsin, came over a slight rise and thought “there’s something in the r…” <thump>.

I was freaked, there was no way for me to see whatever it was since the way the headlights were blocked by the dip in the road past the hill. I was terrified that I’d just run over someone’s beloved pet or hit a little kid or something (the brain doesn’t work super-logically in that situation).

I turned the car around to see what I had hit, and saw a huge raccoon with a squished head in the road, still twitching but obviously very dead.

He had been eating another raccoon that had met a similar fate earlier (there were several tire tracks over it).

Serves the little cannibal right, though I did install foglamps on that car later to better light the road in situations like that.

22

Fort Stewart?

23

sorry Inigo, I didn’t see your post

24

I have two. Both of them happened last year on the same interstate trip for a funeral and my dad was driving so I CANNOT be blamed…

  1. On the way from Brisbane to Merriwa, between Tamworth to Armidale (If anybody happens to know where I’m talking about…you KNOW!), we were the only car for miles, going about 100kph (60mph) and there was about 200 little sparrow-like birds sitting all over the road. Most of them saw us coming, others heard it. But one poor little guy was a little slow on the uptake and uptook himself right into the windscreen. He made an awful SPLAT before going over the roof. Not pretty.

  2. On the way back on this trip, took a shortcut through a small town about an hour from home and it was getting rather dark. We rounded a corner and right in the middle of the road was a huge wombat (those things are HUGE as they are… but this was an especially huge one). We had nowhere to go as we had a truck coming in the other direction and trees on the side of the road. Brakes skidded, hit the wombat. Front of car…broken :frowning: It was written off, a family friend had to come and pick us up :(:frowning: poor wombat.

Stupid Wombat :mad:

25

Squirrels is so stupid. They try to get run over–they run across the street, and then zigzag back at the last second, and I can just hear them squeaking, “Go ahead, I dare you. You won’t hit me, I know it.” It’s like that commercial where the squirrels make the car crash, and they high-five each other. Little furry bastards.

My sad squirrel story: I was driving down the road one lovely fall day, and I saw a squirrel that had been hit by a car. It wasn’t dead, just partly paralyzed, so it was frantically dragging itself across the road with its front paws. I got a very good look at it as I drove past. Couldn’t look away, because I was driving. Ewwwww. I was a little bit traumatized by that one.

My worst car/critter collision was the day I was driving to work, and a bird hit my antenna. What are the odds that a bird is going to hit that tiny little piece of metal as I’m driving really fast down the interstate? Impossible, I would have said, but it happened. And the wing stuck to my antenna. I had to drive all the way to work with this whole bird wing (just the wing, no trace of the rest of the bird) stuck to my antenna like a gruesome little flag. I got to work, grabbed a handful of paper towels, and tried to pull it off, but the damn thing was practically welded to the antenna, and it would not come off. :frowning: So I had to drive around all day with this bird wing stuck to my antenna. Not a good day. I’d rather run over a wombat.

Flat wombat!

26

When I was stationed with VP-8 in Brunswick, ME, a Senior Chief told me the following:

While driving through Sequoia National Forest in CA he came across a group of elementary school students all standing by the side of the road watching a squirrel…well…do whatever squirrels do on the side of the road. Senior chief is a nice guy so he dropped into first and coasted on by, smiling and waving at the kids. As his truck came parallel with the squirrel it stopped squirreling around and darted off.

Directly under the tires of the Senior Chief’s truck.

Last thing he saw was a group of crying elementary school students in his rear view mirror and a couple of pissed off chaperones.

Me? I hit a cow. Yep. Family laughingstock for months. Then my sister hit a recliner…

27

Ft. Stewart - that was it! I wasn’t paying much attention; my friend was a teeny tiny bit drunk and AWOL… OK, he was a friend of a friend, and my car actually worked, so I was “elected” for the drop’n’run.

My old roomate from college lives right around the corner from Hunter. Had his wedding reception at the rec hall there. No roadkill stories from that soiree, though.

28

My friend wrote a song for music class based on these experiences. She calls it “Suicidal Squirrel”. (Stupid squirrels, running across the street. Why do they do that? Do they want to be killed? Suicidal squirrels, why do you do that?) I don’t remember all the lyrics. My father saw a squirrel dart across the street and he stopped a couple of metres in front of it. The thing stopped right in front of our car. Then it stood there, staring at my father while he was waiting for the squirrel to move. When it didn’t, my dad honked the horn and the squirrel literally jumped three feet in the air. Then, it went back the way it came. It didn’t even cross the street…stupid git. Then there was that time where a half-dead squirrel was lying on the road. My mother didn’t see it in time and my warning came too late. It was just a little bump!, but it seriously traumatized me afterwards. Poor things. :frowning:

29

This is kinda different, but I know how you feel, phouka. A bunch of buddies and I were playing golf once (often, actually.) “Mark” saw a squirrel frollicking on the edge of the forest, just in our fairway. Kind of on a lark he throws a golf ball at it. Hits the damn thing SQUARE on the forehead! Poor thing ran in frenzied circles for a few minutes, then died. I felt horrible. Mark (and everyone else…) thought it was hilarious… :frowning:

30

When my husband and I spent a weekend at Hocking Hills (“the hot tub capital of Ohio”), I ran over a squirrel on the way back from the grocery store. It was fall, and he had gathered a bunch of nuts in his little cheeks and hands. I remember looking at him on the side of the road and being cheered by how cute he looked. Then for some reason, he darted in front of me. I gasped then heard the taletell thump, thump. I looked in the rear view mirror and there lay his lifeless body, his fluffy tail still flapping cheerfully in the breeze.

When I got to our cabin, I told my husband what happened. He couldn’t believe that I was crying over a damn squirrel. Sad thing was that it was about 1/4 mile from our rental cabin and so we passed his little carcass a half dozen times that day. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood to have sex after that.

The next morning, the little squirrel was gone. Mr. Pundit theorized that a fox had made off with it, but I’m still wondering if Mr. Pundit, hell bent that a rodent wasn’t going to ruin his anniversary weekend, didn’t dispense of the body himself.

31

After you hit it, was it easier to peel?

32

Well, the squirrel I hit is gone, though he’s been replaced by two other well-pancaked brothers.

Definitely worse than the squirrel was the cat I hit. I was driving from Borrego Springs to Escondido (CA) on a very windy two lane highway. No shoulder, lots of trees on either side. I come into a more open spot with a field on the left. It’s late afternoon/early evening, and I’m at the halfway point, which is a good twenty minutes drive from anything.

I catch sight of a cat, a marmalade tom, running pell mell across the field, gunning for the road. I was the only car in sight. What does the cat do? Doesn’t pause, doesn’t cut behind me, but runs straight at my car. I braked, I wove a bit in the lane, trying desperately not to hit him. But, with the road as windy as it was, I knew I couldn’t cut into the other lane, because there was a blind curve ahead. I couldn’t brake too sharply, because there was another blind curve behind me. I was well and truly trapped.

The cat ran right under my tire, and there was a horrible thump! and jolt to the car. I think the poor thing might have been thrown into the wheel well and back around. I pulled over and walked back to find the cat on the divider line, still alive. There was a little bit of traffic, so I had to wait for it to clear before I could cross over to the cat.

I was completely stumped by what to do. Sure, I could take it to a vet, but the closest one was half an hour away, and they were probably already closed. I checked on the cat. It was lying limp on the pavement, purring to itself. When it saw me, it hissed. I felt so awful. I could see its gums when it opened its mouth, and they were white, so I knew it was bleeding out - internally, since there was no blood on the road.

It took two or three minutes, but it finally died. And I’m still standing there, wondering what the heck to do. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving it there. It had a collar, so it was someone’s pet. What if the owner were a child? How could I leave the cat there for a little girl or boy to find when it hadn’t come home?

So, I got a towel from my car and picked the cat up. It was awful. One of its back legs had been cleanly broken, and it flopped around. A horrible smell came out of it. It was limper than any once-living thing had a right to be. I’d never handled a dead animal before, so this was new. Now I understand why people say you can’t mistake death for life. There was nothing left in this cat.

There were several farms off a side road, so I walked up that road, cradling the cat in my arms. Probably should have driven, but I wasn’t thinking really clearly. I saw a lady in her back yard and called out to her. When I told her about the cat, she took one look at it and said it was her daughter’s. The cat’s name was Lucas.

She didn’t seem to care much. That road was bad, she said. Why, she’d lost three dogs on it in the last two months. Should she tell her daughter that the cat was killed, did I think? I said yes. The daughter should know. Otherwise, she’d think the cat ran away.

I walked back to my car, was offered help and a ride by a very sweet older couple, but I explained what had happened, that I was fine, and would be driving off in a moment. I drove the rest of the way to my parents’ house, crying my eyes out. When I got home, I went straight to my mom for a hug. My dad, who is not the most sympathetic when it comes to animals, was very sweet to me. Even to this day, I feel awful about it.

33

I heard an anecdote once about a group of squirrels in a certain city that learned how to cross the streets at crosswalks only when the signal lights indicated that it was safe to cross.

I swear, if that group of squirrels ever finds a way to communicate that information to their brethren across the country…well, I for one welcome our new fluffy-tailed scansorial overlords.

34

Some squirrels need to be run over.

Example

35

I just remembered this event that happened when my mom was visiting family in Alabama. They were coming home late one night after a good size rainstorm had passed. Mom was driving and after a half hour or so commented about how the storm had left leaves all over the road. Granddad, in his usual sensitive manner, says, “Those aint leaves. They’s frogs.” That’s when mom really noticed the low, continuous thumpthumpthumpthumping coming from below. For the rest of the trip she was skeeved out because the road was so covered with frogs that there was no way to avoid them at any speed. So had to drive regularly and just endure it.

36

While stationed in San Diego when I was in the Navy, I hit a cat one morning. I heard a couple of thumps under my car and when I looked in my mirror, I didn’t see the cat. 20 minutes later I park my car and when I get out, I smell strange smell of cooking meat. I looked under my car and found a well roasted feline wedged between the exhaust pipe and floor of the car. I knocked it out with stick and moved to a parking spot a few aisles over. The dead cat was gone when I came out after work.

Watched a very dumb guy throw a ball across a busy street. I also watch his equally dumb dog run after the ball. The dog’s head left a dent in my front bumper. I wish I would have hit the ball throwing idiot instead.

One morning on my way to work, a female mallard duck flew into the right headlight of my pickup. There were feathers everywhere. I stopped to see if there was any damage. I looked back to see the very dead duck surrounded by 7 little baby ducks. I ended up taking the day off to transport 7 baby ducklings to an animal rescue outfit.

While returning home from watching my granddaughters play T-ball, a small bird flew into the rear window frame of the driver’s side door. And what’s with this feather thing? I had feathers all over the inside of my truck. I pulled over to clear out the feathers when a county sheriff pulled in behind me. He was parked on the other side of the road and saw the whole thing. He thought it was funny. I found the dead bird under my seat.