Not content with my destruction of a work of art, tonight I stooped to an all new low. I joined the exclusive road kill club. It was a bit wet, in dark outskirt streets and my windows were foggy and I swear that Echidna just jumped out at me.
It made a funny crunch sound. Almost exactly the kind of noise you’d expect a prickly animal to make. I was doing the speed limit (100kph) so couldn’t really stop to make sure it was dead. I guess it’s the kind of incident where you want the thing you’ve hit to be dead for its own sake.
What is the road kill protocol? Should I have stopped to make sure it was dead – utilising the tyre iron in my back seat for a quick blow to the little blighter’s prickly head? Should I have just continued on my merry way under the false assumption that I’d missed him, hit a stick and he was actually fine. I’m calling it a him because I think under the circumstances it’s safe to assume he was a he. Girls just don’t have the propensity for playing on the roads after dark.
Let this be a lesson to you all.
Comments
Hello from Gran at Inverell library.
You murderer! Oh well, at least it wasn’t a cat
It appears you are feeling guilty about possibly killing an echidna, otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it. To help alleviate your guilt I suggest you join an echidna-hugging group – they’re the ones that look as though they’ve slept face-down on a bed of nails.
sorry mel, but i think in this case a cat would have been better
Correct protocol is to check the echidna’s pouch for little echidnas. Should you be unlucky enough to find one, you then have to adopt it and bring it up as your own.
It’s kind of like one of those Japanese honour things…
Of course, you’re convinced it was a boy echidna. Let’s hope you were right.