A squirrel gave his life for our modern way of life yesterday.

[yellowcanine]

I was walking the dog and heard a loud BANG like a gunshot. A squirrel was on the ground at the base of an electric pole with a transformer. He was quite dead. Later I walked by and someone had covered up his little body with a jacket.

[Deja Q]

1. And then somebody else took him and made him into a faux mink jacket

:hide:

[Droopy]

2. You should see all of the deer around here getting creamed on the highway

Such graceful creatures, too. I wish God would bless them with enough intelligence to avoid cars and trucks.

[Deja Q]

3. They see a person walking and they scarper fairly quickly. They see a car with headlights,

and they start to think "What is that thing? It looks weird. The weird thing is getting bigger. Still looks weird. Wow, now it's even bigger. Why don't I walk out and get an closer loo--" **SPLAT**

:hide:

[yellowcanine]

6. It's not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of evolutionary history.

The modern era of cars and electrical transformers are a blink in the evolutionary history of squirrels and deer. Though I wouldn't be surprised if deer in highly populated regions weren't already somewhat more "car savvy" than deer in rural areas.

[Roon]

7. I saw a video on youtube of a moose running down a railroad track

in front of the train. As hard as the engineers tried, they ran into the moose and killed him. I would post the link but it's just too damn sad! Poor Moosie. :-(

[ThomCat]

4. Unfortunately, not the first sacrifice.

:(

I hope it was at least a fast and painless way to go. Though I imagine the fall made sure of that if the electrocution didn't.

It's amazing that we can build some immense things, and vast networks of things, but we can't/won't build safety into them. It's like saftey is rarely ever one of the top concerns for any product.

That says something very sad about us.

[TimeChaser]

5. We had one get into a transformer near the dorms a few weeks ago...

Knocked out the power and messed up the fire alarm system for half of campus x(

[marzipanni]

8. Down the street two barn owls were on the power line and touched, conducting the electricity

It was sad to see them lying next to each other on the ground. :cry:
http://www.how-come.net/birdsonwires.html