I can think of about a million things on the internet I wish I’d never seen, but the one IRL thing I saw that was the most horrible was my husband sprawled out on the road about 1 minute after being hit by a truck on his motorcycle. He is OK now, but was pretty seriously injured.
A friend was driving behind the truck that hit him, recognized him and drove to our house to get me (it was only maybe 1/8th of a mile away, if it weren’t for a hill between the house and that road, I would have been able to see him without even going there.) It stays with me to this day because I KNEW in my heart that if he could have moved, he would have. As we drove up and approached I remember hearing myself just moaning “no, no, no, God, no…” and it sounded like it was someone else saying it. I was 100% sure he was dead. He wasn’t, but was injured badly. It’s been probably 7 years or so since that happened and I STILL dream about it like it was yesterday.
A couple of months ago, we were driving home from Vancouver, when I saw a coyote in the middle of the highway that had obviously been hit by a vehicle … he was still alive but having a seizure or something - it was just so disturbing, I still cry just thinking about it.
I remember, on a drive across northern Nevada, we saw a coyote or something crossing the road, maybe 100 to 200 yards away. The freaky thing is that, as it walked across the road, it looked like it was longer from nose to tip of tail than the lane was wide. And these were 10-foot lanes!
It was very difficult for me to get to sleep when we stopped that night to camp.
That reminds me of seeing a racoon get hit when I was a kid. It was a mama racoon leading her babies across the road. We had stopped to let her cross, but the car coming from the opposite direction did not. She was still alive, struggling to lift her flattened head, while the babies were gathered around her squealing.
You see the opossums on the road a few weeks after they give birth. One big pile of yuck, with about six small bumps on the road spread down it for ten feet.
A small thing, but it haunts me every time I drive past the spot:
On a winding back road I saw a small red squirrel in the middle of the pavement and slowed down to avoid hitting it. It scuttled for the shoulder, its little front paws pattering furiously along the pavement.
Dragging its flattened, useless hindlegs, its tail trailing limp behind it.
I saw a old begging woman in Rome who had no scalp. That really stuck with me and freaks me out whenever I think about it. It was so creepy and gross and sad that my friends and I could hardly keep from cracking up from nervous lalughter even though there was nolthing funny about it.
This reminded me of a series of photos of a guy who had been walking around with the entire top of his skull “eaten” away by cancer and maggots devouring his brain. The guy was brought in to the hospital after being in a minor automobile accident. You can see the pictures at snopes; search “maggots brain.”
