Thursday, July 06, 2006

Dead Dog

I saw a dead dog by the road today. It bothered me.
Normally, dead animals don't bother me. Rabbits, possums,
Squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, some cats. Tennessee has its share of road kill.

For some reason though, this one bothered me.
Its image haunted me for miles on down.
Maybe it was the youth of the dog.
Its too big paws.
Maybe it was the collar
Showing that someone loved and cared for it.
Maybe that it was on the side of the road.
It had been hit, but not killed instantly.
It made it to the side and then died. The idea of an
animal in pain is not pleasant.
Maybe that it was there at all.
Whoever had hit it hadn't stopped. They'd gone on to
whatever business they'd had.
Not worrying about the family puppy they'd killed.

All of this flashed by me. As did the puppy,
as I went on to whatever business I had.

I saw a dead boy on the TV today.

And I changed the channel.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Malia said...

Don't be too hard on yourself. There's a disconnect from reality when you are watching tv. Even if it's "real" I think our brains automatically put stuff from television into a sub-fiction category. Also, there's the ability to pick and choose what you see on tv. You're watching a program and see a dead person, you don't want to see that, you can move on. You're driving down the road, you see a dead animal, you had no choice in what you saw and have no recourse but to keep driving.

If you had seen a dead boy by the side of road it would have been completely different.

7/06/2006 1:14 PM
Anonymous said...

I once saw two dead squirels at the same time. Sure, one squirel hit by a car, it happens. But this was two squirels on the sidewalk, several feet from the street. They didn't appear to have suffered car damage. I looked closer and was struck by their position as they lay there dead. They were facing each other, close enough to be touching. Then I noticed something else. One was much smaller than the other - a baby squirel. And then it hit me. They fell together out of the tree above - mother nursing child. I sat down on the sidewalk next to these two squirels, and bawled my eyes out.

7/06/2006 2:41 PM
Clarissa said...

Once I saw Blake Hensley run over a squirrel.

7/06/2006 6:36 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Template Designed by Douglas Bowman - Updated to Beta by: Blogger Team
Modified for 3-Column Layout by Hoctro