It Would Have Been Nice.

It would have been nice if the person who recently hit that female raccoon on US 1  had stopped and pulled her lifeless body off the road.

It would have been nice if her two three-month old kits had not blindly and faithfully followed their mama so closely that they were also killed, but perhaps not by the same driver.

Because if she had been pulled off the road, they may not have wandered back into the road to find her, to stay with her, as young animals often do.

It would have been even nicer if the driver had been driving slower, been more alert to the little animals crossing the road and stopped before the car tires put an end to their lives.

Instead, there was a mama raccoon, crushed and lying in the road,  but with her eyes still open. Wonder what her last vision was. And the two small kits, one about four feet from its mama, and the other at least fifteen feet up the road, also crushed and broken in a pool of dried blood.

Three small, insignificant lives lost? For the first time in months, I pulled over and stopped on the side of the road and prayed that their end had been quick. 

My own life is no more significant than those of the raccoon family, and if you labor under the misbelief that yours is, I will pray for you, too.