How nature made me cry

The minivan story will be up soon...I have to wait for someone *cough, cough* ShankRabbit *cough* to finish writing. In the meantime, here is my story about nature:

It was a typical Wednesday. I had just dropped off ShankRabbit at work, and Peanut and I were heading back home. A few miles away from the house I remembered that I wanted to stop by the bank. I decided to take Highway 100 all the way there (for those non-Milwaukeeans, Hwy 100 is a six lane road. Fairly busy any time of the day). Oddly, not a lot of traffic on the road, "Cool!" I thought. As we were coming up over a bridge, I notice a few cars had stopped or slowed down. I then spied a mother duck and her (8-10?) ducklings crossing the road. They were already in the far right lane (and I was in the middle) so I was able to pass them with no incident. But, my heart got the better of me and I pulled into the right lane, just ahead of them, and turned on my blinkers. A guy in a pick-up truck did the same thing, only he stayed behind the group. So, between our two vehicles, the ducks would be safe.



There was only one other problem - about 5 of the ducklings were unable to make the jump from the road up to the sidewalk. I got out and tried to offer them a makeshift ramp (a book I found in the car), but they were too scared of me. So, I sat in my car and waited. It took about 5 minutes, but they found a crack in the curb they could leap through, rejoining their mother and the other ducklings. SUCCESS! Now, they were all safely on the sidewalk, but next to a (typically) really busy road, about to head over a large bridge. Oy.

Knowing that this mama duck was looking for a nearby water source (and not knowing how close that would be, or how many other streets she'd have to cross) I called the Wisconsin Humane Society's wildlife rescue department and explained the situation. They agreed to look into it.

Now, you're probably thinking, "how did this make you cry?"

Well, just as I was about to leave the spot where I stopped (thank goodness traffic was fairly non-existent), I noticed something in the middle of the road - a duckling that wasn't quite fast enough for traffic, lying in the middle of the street. Mutilated by the continual passing of cars.

Something about seeing that dead duckling, after helping the others, just made my heart sink.


Thanks nature, for making me cry.