Roadkill

Driving in foreign country is always an adventure. Last summer, I violently touched a deer, when I was driving through the States, which damaged the car in such a bad way that a poor guy had to drive up for four hours to replace it. The deer apparently survived, because it was nowhere to be seen.

On the other side of the world, where it is already an adventure to drive on the wrong - or right (though left) side, the roads are paved with small animals that are united with the tarmac in different heights. Besides the fact that they take many forms while dying - long and stretched or small and round, there are also an awful lot of different kinds: white butterflies, little round birds, stretched out mice, opossums or other rodents.
As a true vegetarian, I'm always afraid of these kinds of accidents, I prefer to refrain from any animal suffering whatsoever. However, the number of stupid birds that scarcely escaped the destructive effects of my tires is huge and sometimes the situation demands for the sacrifice of a bird instead of a human - that's obvious of course.

But every time there's a little pile of animal on the road and I drive along or over upright legs, tails or wings in an almost casual way, I wonder how 'mankind' got to be so superior? What makes us better than these animals, and why aren't we bothered by their deaths? We travel to the other side of the world because only there we can find pure nature, we try our best to take pictures without any proof of human action ("too bad of that lamppost", "hey, why didn't they put that fence just a little to the right?", "ugh, that stupid farm ruins my photo"), but we only shrug when we pass the hundreds of lives that once were. Of course, I realize that with all the misery in this world, roadkill in New Zealand will score low on the list - they still had a great life before they met my car. But still. But still. But still, I wonder every time again.