My mother hit a squirrel or marmot in Yellowstone and was rather unhappy about it. I just told her that the magpies would have something to feed their babies for dinner that night and that nothing went to waste in nature.
Jackrabbits are hares, a bit different than true rabbits. Squished one once, got out look an found
- dead jack in the middle
- gut pile a fee feet behind that shot out its backend
- more guts a bit in front, with a beating heart in the middle :eek:
Ground squirrels and marmots are related, there is no taxonomic distinction.
Squirrel hunters find that their job becomes easier when dead squirrels become bait for other squirrels. Yes, some species are quite cannibalistic. So if the magpie doesn’t want it…
Screen name/post combo of the week, I reckon…
I’m lucky I’ve never hit a deer. My sister hit a deer while she was still in her driveway. She lives out in the middle of nowhere and the deer ran right out in front of her across her driveway while she was backing out. She didn’t hit it hard, just bumped it, no damage to the car and the deer ran off. But still, how many people can say they hit a deer in their own driveway?
I’ve hit more birds than mammals…mostly squirrels. But one night years ago I was driving home from work late one night and I hit a rabbit. I was still a teenager so it upset me greatly. I get in the house and start crying. My dad was asked me what was wrong and I blurt out “I HIT A BUNNY!” I know Dad had to fight hard not to roll his eyes or laugh at me.
Well, you did take out all the breeding stock last year…
Having posted my long-ago rabbit story earlier today this very afternoon I was driving along a suburban artery doing about 45mph when a pigeon dived across my path close in front of my car. He damn near collided with my windshield. I had the convertible top down and had two simultaneous fleeting thoughts:
- I didn’t want to end up scaring the damn bird and having pigeon shit on my upholstery as he overflew the car.
- If I killed the bird with my windshield it’d make a heck of a second post in this thread.
Fortunately neither of these things happened. So you get to hear about the close call instead. 
Oh I accept full responsibility for the Boy-Named-Sue syndrome in our chicken coop. We got six chicks this spring, four sexed as females and two unsexed bantams. Once puberty set in, we realized we had four danged roosters and only two hens. We never bothered to rename anyone. So we’ve currently got Peppa and Ethel, two even nastier roosters, in our freezer awaiting the crockpot. They at least died with a swift axe across the neck.
Hal Briston hasn’t checked in yet to regal us about the time he rammed a sheep?
I’ve only had one deer collision, back in 1983. This was on one of the roads along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This big deer with some serious antlers bounded out of the woods bordering the road, right in front of me, no time to stop, so I hit him.
I was driving a 1970 Buick Skylark, from the era when American cars were almost as solid as Sherman tanks, so the car was totally unaffected by the impact, not the least dent.
The deer wasn’t killed, but I crunched one of his back legs pretty good. He was down, on the road in front of me, thrashing around. I wanted to do something to help him, but if I’d tried, I would have taken a pretty good crack from one of his good legs. Eventually he got upright and hobbled into the woods on his three good legs.
Haven’t hit any other large mammals, just the occasional indecisive squirrel.
I once bought an old beater Ford to drive to work. The Ford lasted two weeks before a damn deer killed it. It was a dead tie, neither the deer or the Ford survived.
I was a passenger in a small commuter plane that landed in Yankton, South Dakota. About halfway down the landing strip the plane almost did a nose dive braking to avoid three deer in the landing lane.
Again in Yankton, my next door neighbor was the president of a bank that suffered a break in performed by an apparently addled deer that leaped through a plate glass window and wreaked havoc inside the bank while searching for a way out which turned out to be yet another plate glass window.
Hit a horse many years ago. Driving on a curvy country road to go fishing when something slammed into the side of my pickup. The horse was dazed, I couldn’t tell if it was injured. Went to the next house a few hundred yards up the road to see if they knew who the horse belonged to. Turned out it was a horse they were boarding and the owner had basically given it to them, the horse had health issues and the owner couldn’t afford the vet bills. A few hours later while passing the same spot, saw the guy I talked to earlier digging a big hole with a backhoe. I guessed it was for the horse.
Moose are scariest thing on the road. I mean, I’m worried about deer too, but moose :eek: to the max.
A FOAF hit a bear while on his motorcycle.
And a friend had wild turkeys fly up and bust her windshield while she was on the highway.
So far, I’ve only killed a squirrel. I was only going maybe 20, looking at him thinking, surely he’s going to move…? Thump-thump and just a tail left waving in the breeze.
And if they do move, 9 times out of 10 they turn and run back under your wheels.
Cars: culling the stupid for over 100 years now.
Look at it as a distributed open-source project to genetically improve the local wildlife.
These are the sort of things that come to mind whenever I read someone claiming that the SDMB is the smartest board around. If true, God help the rest of them.
On topic, fortunately I’ve only ever knowingly killed two mammals - both with my car at night. The first was a cute brushtail possum which darted out from the bushes and immediately stopped exactly where a tyre was about to be. No damage to my car.
The second was recent. On a highway a little after midnight a kangaroo on the side of the road decided at the last second to take one hop onto the road. I hit it on the front passenger’s side before I could even get my foot onto the brake. Substantial damage to the car, but after a few roadside repairs (tyre lever and hammer), it was driveable. Will be repaired in a few weeks, covered by insurance (about $4000 damage).
My Daddy once hit a great Dane driving an old VW bug. It totalled the car. The dog was slightly injured, Daddy got out to see about the dog and got bitten, pretty badly. It went to court. The dog owner sued, stating her dog was injured for life. The judged laughed at her and awarded my Daddy $5000 for his injuries and the car. Apparently there was a lease law in the community where she lived, and she wasn’t complying with law,as the dog was out alone and at large.
I’m thinking it would be hard to get a Great Dane in the driver’s seat of an old VW bug. And once you got him in there he couldn’t work the shifter.
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At least he wasn’t in Dad’s pajamas! 
I couldn’t figure out how to work that part in.
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Sounds like she hadn’t renewed the lease.