Don’t Tell the Folks at PETA

This story is pretty grim.

It involves a certain evening drive through the streets of southern Rhode Island with my dear friend Jackie. An evening that ended up involving a couple of dead animals.

We were in college. Jackie is one of the funniest people I have ever met. She is like a finely-tuned instrument, hooked into the comedic spheres.

Here’s a Jackie story, before I get to the story of animal-carnage:

One evening, Jackie, another friend and I, had a very debauched wine-soaked evening at my house. This was also during college. We drank an inordinate amount of wine, and sat around the table, absolutely out of control with laughter for a good 2 hours. Then, as one, we all stumbled into bed, where we all fell asleep. My bed was a double bed, with 3 of us passed out in it.

The next morning, HURTING with the hangovers, we woke up at the same time. Each one of us moaning, squinting, holding onto her temples ….

But did Jackie say, “Man, I am so hungover.”

Did Jackie say, “I feel like crap!”

No. Jackie opened her eyes, spent half a second contemplating how bad she felt, and then said in a flat voice, “You could tap my liver and feed communion to a small Catholic church.”

And now – onto the animal-slaying.

Jackie and I were restless one night. We had nothing to do. I have no idea why. We both were in college. Jackie had a car. And … we were kind of driving around aimlessly. I don’t know where we were going, maybe down to the beach, something.

As we drove down Rte 108, we felt a thud, a sickening thud, and then, filling the air immediately, the unmistakable scent of skunk.

We both gasped, as we drove on.

“Oh no!”

“Did we just kill an animal!”

“Oh shit, we just killed something!”

(We both love animals. I mean, we don’t love skunks in particular, but still – we were upset that we had just careened over one.)

Jackie, upset, felt compelled to turn around and go check. So we did a U-turn, and slowly drove back to the murderous spot. Skunk-scent filled the air. Jackie slowed down to almost a crawl, and as we crept by the spot, we both peered out at the dead skunk in the road.

Neither of us said a word.

A bit chagrined, we turned the car around again, and drove on. Feeling bad for the skunk, yes, but hey, life goes on. We have to keep going … we have to keep driving around … (for what purpose, girls?)

Literally, only a quarter of a mile later, a small white mouse raced out into the middle of the road and we careened right over it, killing it instantly.

Jackie and I both started SCREAMING.

“Ahhhh! Did you see that??”

“Did we just kill a mouse too?”

“What is going on??”

Jackie murmured in a grim tone, “Next thing we’re gonna see is a stallion galloping towards us.”

We were on the edge of hysterical laughter, but it also struck as so odd … that we would murder 2 animals in less than 20 seconds.

Jackie said, hunched over the wheel, “I better get off the road before I kill something else.”

The moments passed, and the situation started seeming funnier and funnier to us. We were crying tears of laughter about the carnage we had left behind, up and down Route 108. We kept making jokes about larger and larger animals we were going to kill as the night went on.

Ha ha. Funny, funny.

We kept driving. We were down near the beach, on a larger road than 108 – with 2 lanes on either side of the yellow line. It was a dark night.

Killing the animals had put us in kind of a giddy hilarious mood. I know that sounds insane and unfeeling, but it is the truth.

But then – We careened around a corner and suddenly – we saw something huge and dead lying in the middle of the road.

She and I freaked out.

“Oh my God – there’s something dead in the road…”

“What is it?”

“Sheila – what is going on??? What is going on tonight?”

This dead thing was in the center lane, and there were cars approaching, so we couldn’t just stop right there to investigate. We pulled over into the breakdown lane, and got out of the car.

It was a dark night but by the light of the streetlamps, we saw that it was a massive Husky dog. Massive. A massive dead fur ball in the middle of the street. A gorgeous dog. Obviously a beloved pet. We were sad for it. We looked up and down the road, but most of the houses didn’t have any lights on. We wanted to knock on some doors. We wanted to get out there and check the dog’s collar for the contact information so we could contact the owners. But the dead dog was lying at a curve of the street, where cars could come whipping around in the dark, and not see us before they hit us.

And … sorry to say … but that was what we witnessed happen … over and over and over and over … with that dog in the street.

We saw it get hit over and over and over again.

The dog was flying up through the air. The dog was splattering down again on the street. And then a car would come around that curve and send the dog flying up into the air again.

Jackie and I, watching this, were doing three things:

We were screaming at the tops of our lungs. We were crying hysterically. And we were laughing hysterically.

Oh, it was beyond horrible to see that dog get hit 20 times.

We finally realized that we could not get out to that dog to drag it off the road without risking getting killed ourselves, so completely out of control – screaming and crying and also ACHING with laughter – we drove over to my ex-boyfriend’s beach house – He lived a couple streets away.

I was probably in a very conspicuous fight with him at the time (we were always fighting and snarling at each other). So there I was on his doorstep, and he was beyond surprised to see us there. He opened the door, and Jackie and I, crying and laughing like maniacs, screamed right in his face, “Can we use your phone? Can we use your phone?”

All of this only became truly amusing much later. When it was all over.

My favorite memory of that weird evening of carnage is Jackie huddled over the wheel, muttering, “I’ve gotta get off the road…”