Road Kill 2

Last week I posted a blog about my new job and how absolutely satisfying it is.  A week later, I still feel as positive and gleeful as I ever did.  The positives are fantastic and I've never been happier.  The negatives are still quite heart wrenching.

Job-wise, nothing is bad or disappointing, but I continue to see dead lifeless carcasses lying by the roadside.  The norm for anyone who travels the highway a lot and I dread the thought that one day, I may become as jaded by the sight as many of these people have become.

Last week's blog I remarked on the menagerie of different animals I'd seen who had lost the head on battle with a speeding motorist, the worst being a dog that had managed to drag itself off the road and into the ditch, where it had died, leaving it's companion alone and crying next to it's lifeless body.  Though I was speeding by at 100km/h, the moment seemed to pass in slow motion.  I could almost hear my heart tearing apart at the sight.

Every day since, when I pass that stretch of highway, I glance into the ditch at the approximated sight of this depressing event, and pay an emotional homage to the pet and it's faithful companion.  However, in the days that have passed, I've seen some other victims of the road, including a young cat that I passed by early this morning.  It didn't look very big.  Just a young cat, probably still a kitten in many ways, lying lifeless on the side of the road, only a couple hundred feet from the tiny little house with the windows glowing from within.  For a second, I wondered if the inhabitants of the house have noticed that their cat never made it home the night before.  I never let my cat outside without being attached to a leash or tether.  Thinking of him being hit by a passing car, would devastate me and I doubt I could survive such heartbreak.

The saddest thing was a fox and two young kits, dead in the middle of the highway, just south of Melfort, SK.  I thought, for a second, that they'd died together trying to cross the highway last night.  I thought that at least they died together, that the kits wouldn't suffer in the wild as orphans.  The more I imagined what had happened, the more horrified I became.  "What if," I speculated, "The mother had been hit, but the kits had survived, but like the faithful black lab from the canine duo last week, the kits lied by their mother's dead body, ultimately being hit by an automobile in the process?"

I know that witnessing dead wildlife at the roadside is something that will not subside.  It's something that I will continue to bear witness to for however long I do this job.  I pray that I won't become calloused to it and stop noticing how heinous the deaths are, but I don't wish to become overwhelmed with grief as much as I have been in recent weeks.

I pay my respects to the fallen victims as I drive past them, acknowledging their existence.  Then by the time I arrive home, my cat, Monkey, is always at the door with hugs and kisses for daddy.  These experiences have made me appreciate him all the more.

I had to end this blog on a positive note... 😏