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Cruelty or mercy?
Jul. 25th, 2006 12:54 pmI saw and did something yesterday evening which is still bothering me. I wondered what the rest of you would think of it. So: herein lies a tale.
On my way home from work I was following a large van down a residential street at about 25 mph. The van was a good hundred yards in front of me and pulling away.
Suddenly a shape darted out from the side of the road and directly into the van's path. I saw both wheels on the right side pass over whatever-it-was. As I got closer, I could see it was a squirrel. Both tires had run it over and it wasn't moving or crawling but it apparently wasn't dead yet because its tail was whipping about. I felt sorry for it (I don't like squirrels, but neither do I like seeing something in horrible agony), so I did the only thing I could.
I drove over it again with both tires, hoping to put it out of its misery.
I looked in my rearview mirror and the tail had stopped moving. I hope I killed it.
Was I being cruel? Was I being merciful? The question bothered me for the rest of the day. Should I have avoided hitting it again and left it to linger on in pain? Was it dead already and the tail twitching just a reflex? Or was it mostly okay despite having been run over twice by a large van?
That last bothers me the most. I don't think I was being cruel by running it over again; I was just hoping to put it out of its misery. But what if I misjudged and it was mostly okay and would have recovered?
Of course there are no answers; one can't possibly know "what might have been". I did what I thought best in a very short time to react. That's all I can hope for in any case.
A more cheerful post to follow later today, possibly with notes about my wonderful houseguest for the past nine days and pictures of our recent outings to Stone Mountain and Fernbank.
-- END OF LINE --
[[The Oracle would like to know what you think of the color blue.]]
On my way home from work I was following a large van down a residential street at about 25 mph. The van was a good hundred yards in front of me and pulling away.
Suddenly a shape darted out from the side of the road and directly into the van's path. I saw both wheels on the right side pass over whatever-it-was. As I got closer, I could see it was a squirrel. Both tires had run it over and it wasn't moving or crawling but it apparently wasn't dead yet because its tail was whipping about. I felt sorry for it (I don't like squirrels, but neither do I like seeing something in horrible agony), so I did the only thing I could.
I drove over it again with both tires, hoping to put it out of its misery.
I looked in my rearview mirror and the tail had stopped moving. I hope I killed it.
Was I being cruel? Was I being merciful? The question bothered me for the rest of the day. Should I have avoided hitting it again and left it to linger on in pain? Was it dead already and the tail twitching just a reflex? Or was it mostly okay despite having been run over twice by a large van?
That last bothers me the most. I don't think I was being cruel by running it over again; I was just hoping to put it out of its misery. But what if I misjudged and it was mostly okay and would have recovered?
Of course there are no answers; one can't possibly know "what might have been". I did what I thought best in a very short time to react. That's all I can hope for in any case.
A more cheerful post to follow later today, possibly with notes about my wonderful houseguest for the past nine days and pictures of our recent outings to Stone Mountain and Fernbank.
-- END OF LINE --
[[The Oracle would like to know what you think of the color blue.]]