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I’ve been driving a lot lately. Criss-crossing the country on motorways, dual carriageways, and on small roads fringed with red fuschia and orange montbretia. The back roads of rural Ireland are spilling over with green; small verdant waterfalls at every corner – a lush and gorgeous landscape.
On every kind of road I travel, I see roadkill. Foxes. Badgers. Rabbits. Hares. Hedgehogs. Sheep. Cats. Birds. Mink and stoat the very odd time. I’ve never seen a deer, and hope I never will.
As I continued with my journey, I felt sick. I felt disturbed. I felt a bit traumatised
Every time I pass something dead, I feel a twinge of sadness. It’s horrible to see dead creatures. It’s awful to know it’s cars like mine that have accidentally killed them. It’s grim to imagine the futile attempt to escape, and the state of mind of the driver who must continue on their journey after striking an animal or bird.
About a fortnight ago, I was on the N4 for the first time since lockdown. It runs northwest from Dublin to Sligo; first as a motorway, then as a dual carriageway, and then as a national primary route. The last time I drove this route was back in November. I was dreading making this part of the journey again, because of what happened last time.
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The last time I drove this road, after I reached the stretch of dual carriageway and was a couple of kilometres in, I saw something moving in the distance. The something was on the right, where there’s a concrete barrier that divides the dual carriageway.
Was it a rabbit, I wondered? My car got closer and the moving thing got bigger. It was not a rabbit. It was a small, lost pet dog, with a collar around its neck, owners’ disc flying, frantically running along the dual carriageway, so very, very far from home.
Horrified, I drew alongside. The exhausted dog looked up at me in that splintered second, running as uselessly as a hamster on a hamster wheel. Because of the concrete barrier in the median of the dual carriageway, there was no way to exit. The dog was in a place on a busy dual carriageway where no pet should ever be.
I realised two things simultaneously: that the dog was not going to be able to escape to safety and that I could not safely stop to rescue it. It would be too dangerous for me and all the other motorists coming behind me. There was no hard shoulder where I might be able to pull in.
I would have to get out and chase after the panicked dog. My car would be a hazard to the cars coming after it. I myself would be a hazard, out of my car and moving around, trying to rescue a dog that was itself an unpredictable moving entity.
Knowing all this, I had to keep driving, even though I knew what was going to inevitably happen. The lost dog was going to be struck and killed by a car: when I looked in my wing mirror, I could already see a car swerving to avoid it.
As I continued with my journey, I felt sick. I felt disturbed. I felt a bit traumatised. Had I done the right thing? Should I have tried to call someone? But who? Was I a terrible person to have kept driving and left the poor dog to its fate? Would someone else have made a different decision?
When I recently drove this stretch of road on the N4 again, I thought again about the dog, and the decision I had made to keep driving. Maybe someone else would have made a different decision, but I did what I thought was the right thing to do in that situation. All we can ever do, even when there is so little time to think, is to do what seems right at that moment.
Last week, I was driving through Connemara, and listening to how people have been reacting to new Government guidelines around Covid-19. It’s hard to keep up; things keep changing so much. Everyone is trying to do what they think is the best thing to do.
Since lockdown eased, I have both been an overnight guest in someone else’s home, and had overnight guests to mine.
Next week, I’ll be seeing a friend I haven’t seen since lockdown. Usually, I stay in her home overnight and we have an extremely long dinner. This time however, I’ll be having a coffee outside, and not even going into the house. She’s doing what she thinks is the right thing to keep herself, her partner and wider community safe. And that’s fine by me, even though I’ve chosen to make different decisions around hosting.
In such an uncertain and fractured time, all any of us can do is to make what we think are the right decisions, and not judge other people – like my friend – for making different decisions. If we start blaming our friends and family for being less or more zealous than ourselves in the ways they choose to keep themselves safe, we stop acknowledging that we are all individuals responsible for our own judgment.
I’m pretty sure some people reading this column have already judged me lacking in some way for not making an attempt to rescue the doomed dog. And that’s fine by me too.
Hilary Fannin is on leave. Her column returns next week