TRIGGER WARNING: Roadkill Story

This isn't a funny story.

It's a cringer.

I had just left my therapist on an up note and was cruising down Los Coyotes Diagonal to go shopping at Pavilion's. Movement in the bike line caught my eye.

I'm giving you until the first line of the next paragraph to step off this ride.

You still here?

Fine.

What I saw was a possum. Its head was on the ground. Its body was cringing and whipping around. It looked like it was trying to get up. I knew it had just got hit. I was past it before I could think. I was on the far side on a five lane road. I couldn't whip around to go back easily.

I drove on and tried to reason with myself:

It's already dead.
I'm not taking it to vet.
There is nothing I can do.

I pulled into the parking lot. Killed the engine. I sat staring at my hands. I couldn't shake it. The primordial empathy of seeing something writhe in pain. The idea of laying there listening to the last fading whine of its nervous system shutting down while cars whizzed past. Dying in a fog of confusion and terror.

I called my husband. He told me all the things I had already told myself. I went in to the store and did my shopping. An hour later, I was grumbling and rearranging my bags, mourning the loss of intelligent baggers at the checkout line. I took the tuxedo chocolate cake container and placed it carefully on my passenger seat.

It still tastes good

I pull out onto Los Coyotes. I get through the light. I check my mirrors and brake hard to turn. The cake goes flying into the floorboard and rolls upside down. I speed up. I find a street entrance to turn around in. I rolled up near the possum. I got out, watching for passing cars. I walk up to it and lean down for a closer look.

Yep. It's dead.

I am achingly aware of how odd I look turning around to park next to roadkill. My Texas childhood firmly ingrained a shame based rejection of outright redneckery. I was praying that no one was creating a "What's for dinner?" meme out of me.

I went back to my car and started searching for something. A towel. A bag. Something. Anything. I pull my emergency kit out from under my seat.

Bingo!

There are a pair of cloth gloves with rubber nubs. I see a flattened cardboard box on the sidewalk. I set it beside the possum. It's mouth was frozen open. There are flies in its mouth and on its eyes. I was gone only an hour. It was already stiff. I placed it gently on the box and carried it to the dirt between the hedges that run alongside that stretch of road.

I ran back to my car. I shuddered then yanked off the gloves and threw them on the floor. I put the cake back on the seat, before I took off like I was leaving a drive-by shooting. I was so embarrassed. I don't know why I went back. Part of me was steeling myself. If that poor thing was still alive, my plan was to grimly drive over it and end its misery. I don't know why I moved it off the street. It's not like it was full military funeral. I didn't say anything over it. Light a candle. Pour out a 40. Nothing.

But it hit me. It hit me hard.

What kind of heartless piece of shit leaves another living thing writhing on the road? What kind of monster blithely drives past tragedy?

We do.

Every day, we scroll past horrors and look for cat videos. The world is writhing in the road. We try to not see it and just get the goddamn grocery shopping done.

Not today. I couldn't unsee it. I couldn't unfeel it. I couldn't help but feel it.