By Bill Shein
June 28, 2015
Hello from the land of Homo sapiens, my little furry friends! I’ve been thinking about you a great deal lately, as in recent weeks I’ve seen too many of you needlessly killed on our Berkshire roads and highways. So let me begin with an apology: Except for the occasional, newly licensed teenager who knows no better, all of us are truly heartbroken and sorry.
Sadly, many of you know us only as four-wheeled predators who seem to kill for sport, running down chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits and birds and then speeding off, seemingly triumphant. To say nothing of the millions of moths and other insects drawn suddenly into our headlights and then painfully into our windshields during warm summer nights.
In our haste to get hither and yon, we have inadvertently become a nonstop killing machine. Even though few of us have any idea what or where “yon” is, or what we’ll find when we get there. And, frankly, “hither” remains something of a mystery as well.
Anyway, my goal here is to find a way to save some animal lives. Because with constructive engagement, I believe we can reduce how many of your already short lives are shortened further on our roadways. And limit the number of accidents that injure us as well.
My proposal is that we work together at a United Nations-sponsored Global Conference on the Fate of Adorable Creatures Who Live Near Our Roads, featuring a keynote by the secretary-general’s newly appointed “Special Rapporteur for Interspecies Cooperation and Survival.” To agree on lifesaving human/road/car/animal interaction standards, and also expand vital connections between humans, animals and nature so we might be inspired, somehow, to urgently address That Much Larger Environmental Problem of Which We Will Not Speak Right Now Lest We Curl Up Into a Collective Fetal Position and Weep Softly.
(Side note: Whenever I read about the appointment of a “special rapporteur” to investigate something or other, my first thought is to imagine a “special raconteur,” a globe-trotting storyteller extraordinaire who visits campfires and kindergartens and graduation ceremonies to hold people spellbound with moving and hilarious tales. And who, of course, also makes balloon animals. No offense!)
Indeed, there is already a U.N.-appointed “Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.” While the purpose of that position is grave and urgent, doesn’t that title also describe what happens when steel-belted radial meets small and fluffy? What could be more arbitrary than the violent end to the life of, say, a young chipmunk who simply wants to get to the other side, where a brisk summer breeze is making tree nuts fall like rain? That’s no capital crime, little friends. On that we surely agree.
Perhaps the global conference will develop the specifics of a very simple solution: A human-sponsored education campaign in woodlands across the globe to teach young non-human animals about roads, headlights, and what to do when they hear the roar of vehicle engines. No doubt AmeriCorps volunteers could staff such a program, properly outfitted with a smartphone app that converts human words into animal speech.
HUMAN (into smartphone app): Hello little squirrel! Hello cute little squirrel!
SQUIRREL (rolling eyes): Oh, dear lord.
Maybe we can all agree that when you’re in the road as a car approaches, you’ll always break right. Or always left. Or always stay motionless so our vehicles can pass safely over you. After, um, the AmeriCorps volunteers teach you about left and right. And how to stay completely still as a giant, loud machine bears down on you.
Okay, this may be more difficult than I thought. Is there a technological solution? Because technology always saves the day, right? What? Hello?
While I’m not an automotive engineer – my expertise is in spacecraft propulsion – perhaps we can design a vehicle and tires made entirely from Nerf or feathers or Gummy Bears that will transform car-animal collisions into something resembling an intense pillow fight. Why wouldn’t that be possible? We did, after all and with my help, put a man on the moon.
Believe me: If the knowledge I’ve gained from my nearly-complete-but-still-secret work on space-dust-fueled intergalactic hyperdrive engines could be helpful, I’d quit my highly classified job at NASA and work on this problem full time. You totally know I would.
In the meantime, I’ll use evenings and weekends to help end the carnage on our rural byways. I’m already at work planning that United Nations conference: You guys free a week from Thursday? Great! Please let the moths know that it’s a daytime event, so no worries there. We can do this!
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Bill Shein’s interaction with the animal kingdom is of great interest to many psychologists.
(This column first appeared in the Berkshire Record newspaper on June 19, 2015.)