driving to Currarong this morning, I saw the little body of a wallaby lying on the opposite side of the road.
it's a 100km zone, but I tend to scan the surface continually as I drive. it's why I'll hopefully never run over a lizard that almost looks like a twig, and have saved about 5 turtles/tortoises (yes I still get confused), and recently, a $20 note.
anyway.
I always notice road kill. I can't help it. especially since I hit a kangaroo when I was about 19 - when I got to my brother's place, being a total sooky-la-la, his first question was, "Did you go back and kill it properly?"
I hate that, because that's not my sort of brave. I try, but I'm really crap at it.
so I saw the little fluffy wallaby, and being early in the morning, it didn't look long dead. it was in exactly the wrong spot on the road, too, and I just knew that if it was still there when we drove back, I'd want to move it off the road.
more to the point, I'd want to check it to make sure there wasn't a joey if it was female.
problem is I've never done it, because I'm crap at things like that. but it's always in my mind whenever I see roadkill, and like I said, I always see roadkill. maybe I'm the Haley Joel Osment of roadkill.
it was in the back of my mind the whole morning.
on the drive home, someone had already done it. thank goodness. the little body was tucked into the bushes.
but how do you stop being really bad at these things? I just go all woogy and teary. it's not the fear of touching a dead thing (ick, but you know, possible). it's the emotions.
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Dead things are icky. They always will be. I wonder at the people who can move past it, but I know there's plenty out there who can't.
ReplyDeleteSitting here, it's easy to say that I can't. But then again, I'm pretty tuff and stoic in a crisis. Perhaps if the need were greater, you'd be in like flynn.
Though maybe not like Errol, I hear he was a 'goer'. Nudge nudge.
wink wink, say no more!
ReplyDeleteI can touch/handle dead things, but I guess it's only when there really is no alternative.
and of course there was dad, but that's different. I didn't have to move him off the road and check in his pouch for a joey, heh. ya gotta laugh.
perhaps part of it is the feeling of invasiveness of checking the body? perhaps part of it was the recentness of death. then again, once things start decomposing they become a different sort of ick.