Last night my partner and I went to pick her sister up from the train station. On the way back
home, two grown dogs and a puppy attempted to run across the street. The two grown dogs
made it across the street, while the puppy was hit by a car. The driver stopped his car, looked
out of the window at the screaming puppy, and than continued to drive like nothing happened.

I was pissed. I had my partner pull over and got out of the car to collect the puppy. We drove her
to a 24 hour pet hospital. She ended up living.

My questions:

1) Have you ever hit an animal?
2) What would you do if you hit an animal?
3) Do you care more about one animal than you do another? ( hitting a dog vs. a bird)
4) Does your response depend on if the animal is alive or dead?

I was mad at both the person who hit the puppy and all of the people who kept driving right on past.
I really can't understand how someone could watch a 4 month old puppy wither in pain and just drive on.

Maybe someone can help me understand?

a dog ran out in front of my car once.

it ran back into the darkness and either

hid or got back to it's home. i bent the block

a couple of times then got on about my biz.

i generally move dead cats out of the road.

i cannot stand how people keep passin them by

runnin over them, or just hittin 'em in the first place.

where i live there are an abundence of wild rabbits

and i bullshit you not, most of them are suicidal.

they will run in front of your car and if you've missed them

they'll turn around and try to run under your car.

they litter the roads round here in the day, and at night

they're in a suisidal frenzy

LadyCasanova said:

Last night my partner and I went to pick her sister up from the train station. On the way back
home, two grown dogs and a puppy attempted to run across the street. The two grown dogs
made it across the street, while the puppy was hit by a car. The driver stopped his car, looked
out of the window at the screaming puppy, and than continued to drive like nothing happened.

I was pissed. I had my partner pull over and got out of the car to collect the puppy. We drove her
to a 24 hour pet hospital. She ended up living.

My questions:

1) Have you ever hit an animal?
2) What would you do if you hit an animal?
3) Do you care more about one animal than you do another? ( hitting a dog vs. a bird)
4) Does your response depend on if the animal is alive or dead?

I was mad at both the person who hit the puppy and all of the people who kept driving right on past.
I really can't understand how someone could watch a 4 month old puppy wither in pain and just drive on.

Maybe someone can help me understand?

Thank you for what you did!!!

You have a great heart.

I once ran over a raccoon...it was late at night, I was driving home from work...saw the thing walking at the side of the road...and suddenly as I approached it ran into my path.

I felt the bump and looked back, and it was flailing like a fish out of water.



I was shaking and will never forget that horrible sight.

PurpleJedi said:

You have a great heart.

I once ran over a raccoon...it was late at night, I was driving home from work...saw the thing walking at the side of the road...and suddenly as I approached it ran into my path.

I felt the bump and looked back, and it was flailing like a fish out of water.



I was shaking and will never forget that horrible sight.

Murder!?

I have had a possum commit suicide by jumping in front of my car.

I've never hit an animal. If I did, I'd keep on driving.

PurpleJedi said:

You have a great heart.

I once ran over a raccoon...it was late at night, I was driving home from work...saw the thing walking at the side of the road...and suddenly as I approached it ran into my path.

I felt the bump and looked back, and it was flailing like a fish out of water.



I was shaking and will never forget that horrible sight.

Thats the thing, I don't consider what I did "great." I very much felt like it was simply what needed
to be done. As jaded as I am, the fact that people simply kept on driving/walking past while the poor
thing suffered confused the fuck out of me. I don't know how it works in NY, but around here
we can take an animal that gets hurt in that kind of accident and drop it off at the pet hospital
without paying out of pocket.

I don't know what I would do if it was a racoon, I would be afraid to try and help it without
gloves and a thick blanket or something.

My mom hit a cat when I was... 14/15...and I made her pull over so I could help it. The damn thing
clawed my arms to ribbon by the time we got to the pet hospital. I remember crying and holding
on to it for dear life, even as my mom told me I should fling it out of the window.

KingBAD said:

i generally move dead cats out of the road.

i cannot stand how people keep passin them by

runnin over them, or just hittin 'em in the first place.

Yes to this entire section! I once saw a car hit a dog and the dog got back up to try and get to
safety, only for another car to hit it again. The second car did not even try to miss it, just hit it
dead on and kept going. Two or three more cars just rolled over it after that.

i've never hit an animal so far, thank heaven. when i see an animal by the road i stop and get help for it, when i can. mostly when i stop, the animal is already dead. if i can i'll move the dead animal out of traffic and if i have a chance to move someone still alive like a turtle out of the road i do it (i carry blankets and boxes for handling snapping turtles), and baby birds too who end up in the roadway without knowing what's going on. it bugs me no end that people are so mean and won't swerve or stop for animals. i cannot believe how cruel some folks are. good for you for helping the puppy. thank you for that

LadyCasanova said:

PurpleJedi said:

You have a great heart.

I once ran over a raccoon...it was late at night, I was driving home from work...saw the thing walking at the side of the road...and suddenly as I approached it ran into my path.

I felt the bump and looked back, and it was flailing like a fish out of water.



I was shaking and will never forget that horrible sight.

Thats the thing, I don't consider what I did "great." I very much felt like it was simply what needed
to be done. As jaded as I am, the fact that people simply kept on driving/walking past while the poor
thing suffered confused the fuck out of me. I don't know how it works in NY, but around here
we can take an animal that gets hurt in that kind of accident and drop it off at the pet hospital
without paying out of pocket.

I don't know what I would do if it was a racoon, I would be afraid to try and help it without
gloves and a thick blanket or something.

My mom hit a cat when I was... 14/15...and I made her pull over so I could help it. The damn thing
clawed my arms to ribbon by the time we got to the pet hospital. I remember crying and holding
on to it for dear life, even as my mom told me I should fling it out of the window.

I know for a fact that if you hit a deer in NY, you are obligated to get it off the road.

I don't know about raccoons (or possums). Those things can be rabid.

Also - if you take it to an animal hospital, you pay the bill.

last summer there was a crazy squirrel in my neighborhood. i swear it seemed he darted right into the path of my car every time i pulled out of the drive. i learned to watch out for it. WHY do they leap in front of us like that?

PurpleJedi said:

I know for a fact that if you hit a deer in NY, you are obligated to get it off the road.

I don't know about raccoons (or possums). Those things can be rabid.

Also - if you take it to an animal hospital, you pay the bill.

Really? There is no where they can be taken for free?

Here, hospitals make you foot the bill if it is your animal or if you hit the animal. There are a few
places where good samaritans can take an animal that they "saved." Depending on how bad things
are, the places will either give the animal medical attention or put it down. If they can be saved they
are later put up for adoption.

glad you saved the puppy, seeing it in pain like that must have been distressing.

i've had some near misses with foxes & rabbits but to my knowledge have never run any over..

i remember when i was little my dad ran over a seagull, we looked behind us & just saw a huge cloud of white feathers like someone had emptied a feather pillow into the air

thesedays i stop rush hour traffic to move dead animals (pre squashed) out of the road.

when i went to florida there were dead alligators in the road! imagine mowing down an alligator?!!

& kangeroos sit on the edge of the road, i think to deliberately freak you out. i saw plenty of those dead in the road too (not in florida)

excited said:

glad you saved the puppy, seeing it in pain like that must have been distressing.

i've had some near misses with foxes & rabbits but to my knowledge have never run any over..

i remember when i was little my dad ran over a seagull, we looked behind us & just saw a huge cloud of white feathers like someone had emptied a feather pillow into the air

thesedays i stop rush hour traffic to move dead animals (pre squashed) out of the road.

when i went to florida there were dead alligators in the road! imagine mowing down an alligator?!!

& kangeroos sit on the edge of the road, i think to deliberately freak you out. i saw plenty of those dead in the road too (not in florida)

What the crap?

I would think a gator would rip the bottom of a car to shit.

I've only hit a bird once. I pulled over and checked on him to see if he was dead. He was still alive so I grabbed my sweater to wrap him up and take him to the nearest vet but as soon as I picked him up he died.

I would NEVER leave an alive but injured/suffering animal. After my yard was dug up for septic work I found a star-nosed mole with one of his limbs almost severed off from the worker's digger. I took him to the nearest vet where they euthanized him so he wouldn't suffer. I was willing to pay for it but they did it at no charge.

I think roadkill that just sits on the road is appalling. It is absolutely wrong for children to grow up seeing that and thinking that it's ok. Hell, look at how many people think roadkill is funny - it's on cards, toys, etc. Fucked up.

The way people treat animals shows a lot about the character of that person.

I hit a dog once on the way home from a club in the 1990s. Yes, I felt bad for hitting it. Did I stop? HELL naw! I be damned if I was going to get a DUI.

.

About two or three years ago, I hit another dog on the interstate on the way home from work. Why he was on the interstate of all places, I'll never know. No, I didn't stop. If I had, there would have been massive wrecks behind me. I looked through my rear view mirror and no one else stopped either. I mean, no one could stop because stopping abruptly while everyone is going 60 miles an hour would cause a chain or wrecks.

Awww, this thread is making me sad (being the huge animal lover that I am).

LadyCasanova: Big kudos for you for helping that poor puppy. I could never just drive away either. I hit a raccoon once. It was on a dark, not well lit street. He ran right in front of my car, and I felt a bump. When I felt the bump, I knew that I had hit him/her. I stopped and looked out of my car window at the raccoon. It wasn't dead, but I could tell that its paw had been injured. It then ran away into someone's yard or in the woods somewhere. I sometimes wonder what happened to it. Did the raccoon manage to live, or did it wind up passing away? I felt awful about just driving away like that, but I did not know where the raccoon went off to, plus I would not want to try to handle a wild animal that is injured. It would no doubt be in pain and frightened, and would probably wind up scratching and/or biting me. I couldn't call an animal rescue place, since they would want to know where the animal was, and I would not be able to give them a good explanation.

I'll never forget once when I was a little kid. My family and I were leaving church after the Sunday service. There was a cat that apparently had been on the engine of someone's car. The car owner did not know the cat was under his hood, and started the car. The cat was badly injured, and the poor thing kept rolling over again and again in obvious pain. It was winter, and I remember his blood was getting all over the snow. We didn't stay to see what happened next, but there were a couple of people standing over the cat. I hope that it was euthanized so that it would no longer suffer. But with the amount of blood that was coming out, the animal probably bled to death. Poor kitty.

If I see an animal in my path while I'm driving now, I will blow my horn at them, to get them to move out of my way. If they don't move right a way, I slow down to a stop if I have to, to avoid hitting them. There are a TON of deer in this area, and I would hate to accidentally hit one of them. They can do some major damage to your car (that's happened to my mom twice already). Most times they will run or fly away when they hear my car horn. I feel funny admitting that I do that, but I have saved some animals' lives, and prevented them from becoming roadkill. I feel sad when I see a dead animal on the side of the road.

[Edited 2/17/14 10:50am]

I've never hit an animal, thank God, but I was driving behind a man who hit a dog. He stopped momentarily and then started to take off. I followed behind him beeping my horn. He stopped and I got out of the car. I said, "You hit that dog and was gonna drive off!!" Meanwhile, the dog laid on the road but managed to get up. I could see the fear in his eyes. I tried to calm him, but he managed to run away. I planned to take him to the vet. The man was sorry about what he did and probably would have offered to help in some way.

If I see dead animals on the road, I will call animal control to let them know to come pick it up. I once saw a beautiful orange tabby, looked like Morris, dead on the side of the road. He looked perfect, not all smashed up, so either he was hit in a way that didn't mangle him or he died from something else. I picked him up and put him in my car and took him to the animal shelter for proper disposal. He didnt' have a collar.

Another time I saw a dead fawn on the side of a busy city street. How he got there, I have no idea. Poor thing was so pretty. I called animal control to pick him up before someone came along and cooked him up.

Never hit an animal with my car. I'm always dodging those birds.

[Edited 2/17/14 13:01pm]

In Ohio if you hit a deer you are required by law to notify the county sherriff so they can have someone pick up the carcass and use it if wanted. I know this cause I hit a deer on my way to the homecoming dance on a saturday night. The date was NOT happy.

LadyCasanova said:

excited said:

glad you saved the puppy, seeing it in pain like that must have been distressing.

i've had some near misses with foxes & rabbits but to my knowledge have never run any over..

i remember when i was little my dad ran over a seagull, we looked behind us & just saw a huge cloud of white feathers like someone had emptied a feather pillow into the air

thesedays i stop rush hour traffic to move dead animals (pre squashed) out of the road.

when i went to florida there were dead alligators in the road! imagine mowing down an alligator?!!

& kangeroos sit on the edge of the road, i think to deliberately freak you out. i saw plenty of those dead in the road too (not in florida)

What the crap?

I would think a gator would rip the bottom of a car to shit.

i know, & rip your head off trying to rescue it!

A rabbit, at 2am alone on a dark isolated road. I stopped, looked, didn't see it in the road, thought it was best I didn't make a big effort wandering looking for it. Felt miserable, though.


Stopped once to pick a kitten up out the middle of the street. It was very sick. Took time off from work to take it to the animal shelter, with permission. It didn't make it.

Geez! What a depressing thread.

kitbradley said:

Geez! What a depressing thread.

Go kill some frogs. It'll make you feel better.

Isn't that right Rodeoschro?