It may or may not surprise you to know that - to my knowledge at least - I have never, be it by accident or in an act of cold blooded murder, killed an animal (insects don't count) before. Well not until the early hours of Sunday morning anyway.
In school there were always stories of ill-fated fated incidents involving man and animal. There is the well known story of one lad in my form who quite innocently dropped his dog down the stairs causing instant death. Another lad in my class used to catch frogs from his old primary school pond, true he would let them go, but rather than placing them gently back into the water where he plucked them from, he would send them as high in the air as he could first. I don't know how flexible frogs are, but it couldn't have been too nice for the little amphibians. The third story that comes to mind, and by far the most appalling of the 3 is of the lad who used to catch fish and chuck them against a wall. There may have been more to it than that, but thankfully I never witnessed this act of cruelty. Lastly and fast forwarding some 15 years, as recently as last month a friend of mine, Philip Mackenzie, apparently attempted to kill his girlfriends dog only for the mutt to get away with a broken leg, I can only think he did it out if pure jealously. Cruel bastard.
It had been a long - albeit worthwhile - Saturday at Reading festival and by 0315 hours I had been driving for the best part of 3 hours having been on my feet the day before. Suffice to say I was feeling a little tired and looking forward to a few hours in bed before I had to get up for what was to be a typically arduous round of golf just 7 hours later. Anyway, I digress, I'm not here to talk about my problems on the golf course, that's for another day and could probably fill a book, let alone a quick blog entry.
So, driving home at 0315 hours just 300 yards from home after over 200 miles of calm, uneventful road, there I was, hardly about to fall asleep at the wheel, but very much looking forward to my bed. Not for the first time in my 8 years of driving I noticed a creature run across the road, it's never been a problem before and anyone who has driven for a reasonable amount of time can vouch that the beast will usually escape unharmed.
There it was in front of me, the proverbial rabbit in headlights, hopping helplessly ahead of two tonne of steel. I'd normally slow down to let the little creature pass, but this, as I've explained, wasn't normal circumstances, with home so close I was already halfway into my bed and the furry little bunny didn't give me adequate time to dodge it. So rather than do my usual slowing down tactic I stepped on the gas as I thought I would attempt to drive straight over it with both front and back wheels missing the bunny, in theory this (at the time), seemed like a good idea.
Alas my quickly devised plan failed and after successfully missing it with the front wheels I heard a series of bumps as the car itself went over it. I knew what had happened and also knew there was little to no chance that it had escaped unharmed, although I told myself it was a possibility, perhaps it had somehow bounced off and got away with a broken toe or tooth or something.
I was now wide awake, having to be up in a few hours for said round of golf, thinking of the poor rabbit I had probably just killed. I swear it had looked me in the eye just before I sent him/her to meet its maker too, we definitely shared a moment.
As expected, when I drove past the next day the rabbit had hardly moved from the spot where I first saw it only now it was considerably flatter and unrecognisable from when we had first met. So there we have it, my first taste of killing another mammal, my first case of road killing a rabbit. Road kill.
Murderer!
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