Something that always use to bother me was "
roadkill."
My heart would jump each time I saw a small creature whose body had no place to go no home to be absorbed back into and I mutter a silent sorry. 'Sorry your lost your life', 'sorry I can't help you find a cool refreshing spot of earth to covet for the short time your physical body has left here' and 'sorry I am so weak when it comes to facing such horror'.
I believe that all things (including myself if I could pull it off) have a right to return to where they sprung from yet day after day we pass by these small entities, whose life has been ripped away by fate. Day after day we watch them dwindle down flatter and flatter, smashed again and again by drivers 'til they are the dust carried away in all four cardinal direction - north, south, east and west, by the very steal and rubber beasts that stole their life.
Something had to change or so I felt I must take action and do the right thing.
You see, I made up my mind that given opportunity I would make sure that the roadkill that crossed my path would at least be shoveled to the side of the road to be on consoling mother earth. I left for school one morning and caught site of a poor ugly little opossum that was almost directly in the middle of the road and I told myself I would move him when I got home.
Not a few hours later, when I returned I passed by him/her/it a few hundred feet from my driveway (we lived in the country) it wasn't fresh kill anymore. It had been smashed a few more time, was a little gooier, a little flatter and a little messier but I stood by my word. I summoned up every ounce of bravery I could find grabbed the shovel and started down death road (bad pun). I kept telling myself I can do this, I can do this, I am not some little girl throwing-up at the thought of going in an outhouse. I am not that teenager who slid down a granite rock at the swimming hole after falling on the six bottles of coke I was carrying and almost passing out from the cleaning. Lucky me, only two bottles broke.
"Nah, I am an adult" I preached with vigor as my heart began to sink. I held it in and thought of how if I was in this position I would hope some super being would be kind enough to come shovel me into the dirt - it wasn't working though. I bravely slipped the shovel under the balanced center of this soft mess summing up that with one good fling I could land it in the tall grass at the side of the road and be on my way. Oh but when I lifted my shovel firmly planted underneath soulless flesh and bones. When I lifted praying that nothing would gush out or fall away, yes when I lifted that poor mangled piece of biodegradable fodder my fate was sealed.
That horrific sucking sound, as something soft and fleshly sticking to the surface below is freed - a sound very reminiscent of slurping soup or sucking a long string of spaghetti yet indescribably gut wrenching. That sound sealed my fate, dooming me to avoid ever doing so grand and noble a deed again. My stomach lurched I felt it rising and held steady ready to fling corpse to a safe and undisturbed final resting ground in the tall grass owned by the county road department. A lifeless thing that cared neither one way or the other where it laid - trouble was I did.
It flew with all the grace and force my out of shape overweight body could channel into what must have been a very heart heavy seven pounds balanced on the end of the long handled shovel. The deed was done, the dead was gone but not forgotten.