I was coming back from the farm and saw a small mammal moving down the opposite side of the road. We have muskrats and woodchucks moving occasionally. But it wasn't either of those. The brown color was wrong. Legs a tiny bit too long, making a rolly poly stride but not very fast. Neck too long but head and nose were down. Tail was not rat like and it was up, not down like a woodchuck... After I passed I kept puzzling about what it could be and I thought about turning around. But I continued home. On my afternoon run back to the farm I saw that someone had run the animal over. Sadly I wondered if it had been a fat very young puppy. I talked to my daughter about it and she said it could have been a coyote puppy. That never occurred to me although we definitely have coyotes around. What would I have done if I had gone back to see what it was just after I passed it? Coyotes bad. Puppies good. Coyote puppy???? Last thing I need... Normal puppy easier to bring home.
My initial instinct is to say that people are assholes. Some idiot made a cynical split-second decision. On the other hand, coyotes will decimate your livestock, and--to my knowledge--contribute nothing but maybe rodent control once they've satiated themselves on your easy pickin's.
Whenever I see a dead animal on the road I wonder why. out here you can slow down or drive around things since it is not heavily traveled. Of course squirrels and deer appear out of nowhere but this little thing was not like that. I even wonder about turtles who buy it. I even avoid dead things on the road. I don't like the feel or sound of running over little bodies. The point about prejudice is if I had recognized it as a puppy, would I have stopped and gotten it if I recognized it as a coyote as opposed to a dog.
It's breeding season and it was most likely the young of some local critter. Some don't take on a familiar appearance until mature.
Speaking of dead puppies, it brought to mind one of the saddest things I have ever experienced. On my way home from work late at night (I always worked strange hours), I saw a dog that had been hit lying in the road. The dog was fairly large--a Golden Retriever, I think--and the dog was lifting its head and looking at drivers as car after car drove over the animal. I was appalled that this creature was still alive and no one was even slowing down. I stopped to block traffic and a concerned woman stopped going the other way. We loaded the poor dog into her van and she said she would take it to the vet emergency clinic. I suspect it was just euthanized as it was very badly damaged, but I was horrified that people could be so heartless.
....and then you get the opposite, those who stop to check on an animal they have hit, find it dead and gently place it at the side of the road. When one of my cats went missing, I phoned the vet to ask if one had been brought in. It appears that a gentleman had hit my cat, and took it to the vet. He left his details so that I was able to thank him. The cat died, but at least I knew what happened to it.
Same sort of thing happened here with a fawn. As I drove past, it lifted its head. I called the sheriff and reported it as did many others, apparently. I told them I had a gun (stupid) but was not sure of the best way to use it here. I figured a ricochet off the pavement with my luck.
Mary is from Wisconsin. Was it a Wisconsin Badger? Wisconsin is the badger state. The University of Wisconsin football team are called the Badgers.
Nope. Not the animal nor a football player. Badgers are rare in this area, mostly at the west/southwest side of the state. I've only ever seen two.