Mr. Owl's Wild Ride

When it comes to woman v. nature, nothing makes me feel more like a jerk than when I hit an unsuspecting creature with my vehicle. For some reason, animals haven’t learned to use sidewalks and steer clear of anything resembling asphalt. Go figure!

While on one hand I claim to be saddened when I strike beasts on the road, on the other hand, I’ll gladly inhale a hamburger and crunch on some delicious bacon with nary a thought given to what got the meat product from the farm to my plate.

Also, though I am not a hunter myself, I am more than happy to partake in venison, rabbit, quail or whatever else someone hauled in from the forest. If you fish, I’ll sit at your table and enjoy the catch of the day with you. Critters are cute, but dinner is dinner.

Those animals on the road are exempt from my emotional indifference. I have been personally responsible for the untimely demise of a rabbit, a deer and a handful of squirrels who didn’t know what direction they wanted to go once they got in the middle of the road.

Here is some advice for the squirrels out there: Commit to a direction! Most people don’t want squirrel debris on their vehicle so just cross the road! Don’t double back 10 times and then act surprised when you get hit. This is why “squirrel-brained” is negative description of a person instead of positive.

Animals I’ve never hit, but always stop to help, are turtles and tortoises. Gopher tortoises are threatened and not mean at all. I’ve never seen a snapping turtle in the road so I’m not sure I’d stop to help one of them.

Birds are a whole other bread of creature. They dart out of the sky or from the edge of the road and you can be left truly unprepared for their sudden appearance.

This brings me to the great horned owl that a certain woman hit while driving on Florida’s Turnpike. The story got my attention not because the owl actually survived the 150 mile trip in the Ford truck’s grill, but for two other reasons.

First, she was aware that she hit a bird and thought it was an owl, but then knew it couldn’t be an owl because she believes that owls always hide in trees and we never see them.

I take issue with that statement because I see owls all the time and I don’t mean the plastic ones on buildings and telephone poles. I see real, live owls. I guess it has been ingrained in our heads that owls sleep in the day and can hunt and fly solely at night.

Second, even though she knew she hit something, she didn’t check her truck. The first thing I’d do is pull into the next rest area and check out my vehicle to make sure everything was okay. I don’t need bird bits digging into my radiator.

This poor owl had to wait a whole day to be noticed by another person. They think he’ll be fine, but I believe the owl doesn’t feel fondly about humans anymore.

I hope they try to get him back home. The worst thing we could do now is deny him the opportunity of telling all his owl buddies about the time he rode all the way to Pompano Beach in a grill without getting grilled.

If they are anything like us, they’ll never believe him.