by Alice Rush
DURING my travels in the Netherlands, I enjoy seeing the different kinds of wildlife. The hares are HUGE compared to the ones we have on the east coast in the US. I’m not even 100% sure that I’ve seen hares here. I saw rabbits all over Maryland, but I don’t see many in northern Maine. While driving in the States, there are so many instances of animals, usually wildlife, being hit by vehicles. I haven’t seen that in Holland, although I’m sure it happens.
This week I had a particularly sad situation on my way to drop the car off for service. Someone several cars ahead of me, but still well within my range of sight, struck a fawn as it crossed the road. They didn’t even stop. I had to stop immediately because I was devastated. I sat there at the side of road crying for several minutes, watching other cars pass. A nice man stopped ahead of me and got on his phone right away to call the incident in to the authorities. That is an obligation in Maine. I imagine that it is the same in Holland?
In Maine, if you have an accidental collision with a deer, moose, bear or wild turkey you are required to call law enforcement. Maybe the driver who hit this fawn didn’t know that. The other guy was still on his phone when I pulled myself together enough to move on. I was meeting a coworker at the auto shop so that she could drive me to work after leaving my car there, and I didn’t want her to have to wait.
I managed to get to her, but the minute I got in her car she could tell that something was wrong. She asked if I was all right, and I immediately fell apart again. Talking yourself through all the logic of ‘accidents happen’, ‘this happens to wildlife all the time’, etc, does not take away the shock and sadness of seeing it when it occurs.
I HIT A deer in Maine 3 or 4 years ago. That deer kept right on going, so thankfully I may not have hit it too badly. When I was a teen I couldn’t avoid hitting a rabbit on the rural road where I lived. I was distraught about that for a bit too. I have had birds collide with the windshield, and it always upsets me. I hope I never see a domesticated animal in a car accident. I know people who have been in the car when this happened and others who have seen it.
I am almost sure that I would have to take that day off from work or from whatever my plans were. Or maybe I should go to work to be distracted if possible. Either way, it would emotionally wreck me. When we lived in South Carolina there were accidents with dogs in the road. I never witnessed one, but I have heard that many of the southern states have a problem with allowing dogs and cats to run free, and bad things happen.
There is a potential for avoiding some of this if we just didn’t follow so closely in traffic, bumper to bumper. I can’t be sure if the first or the second car was involved in what I saw, maybe both. They were very close together. I was farther back and thankfully had time to pull over at a good distance.
Traffic on the country roads here really upsets me. That’s a whole other topic that I have written about before, so I won’t revisit that now. I’ll just say that we have beautiful wildlife in Maine, and sometimes, unfortunately, sad things happen. However, drivers with no patience, exceeding the speed limit and not allowing adequate space, only add to the problem. I try hard to remind myself of this when I get behind the wheel, and this past week it is heavy on my mind.
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
