Casual Destruction

Nature had prepared the bird to escape any number of ground- and air-based predators, but against two tons of metal hurtling toward it at 55 miles per hour evolution had apparently given it little answer. I saw it try to take wing, wondering why it waited so long, just as it disappeared from view. In the time it took me to kill the bird, from the instant I realized he (she?) was going to react too late, to glimpsing feathers drifting down to the pavement in my rear-view mirror, I was able to utter three words.

"God. Damn. Bird."

Angry words, but spoken with sadness. Because it really wasn't the bird's fault that it died. She had the right instinct; she merely waited too long. One might argue that through such (un)natural selections, the gene pool for the species is improved. One might be right. But I did not run over an entire species of bird. A species is an imaginary notion anyway; it is abstracted from the totality of its individuals. And an individual is what I killed.

I can never know what the inner world of a bird is like or, indeed, whether it has one. I have enough trouble conceiving of my own. It's hard enough to understand what it is like for me to be alive here and now. Life itself has arisen from the chance interactions of chemical processes. It is complicated, and requires the input of energy, and for all that it is still difficult to comprehend.

Killing is so much easier, stopping the processes is all that is required. On. Off. Like a switch. That my flipping this particular switch was an accident, that what was a bird and is now a carcass that will help other animals live, does not change my culpability.

If I had any decency I would cry. If I believed in God I would pray. If I had the courage of my convictions I would give up meat, at least for the day. But the best I am apparently able to do is register my regret, realizing that it will not last as long, perhaps, as it should. And I'm sorry.