The wife and I were on our way home from the grocery store yesterday, listening to the new White Stripes CD and talking about the manicotti we were going to make for supper that night. I was driving along a semi-rural stretch of highway, and I noticed a rather large turtle sitting right near the white line of the road on the shoulder side. I've been known to stop and move turtles off the road but a few things were against me here 1) It was right after 5pm and traffic was decently heavy, 2) The turtle in question wasn't a nice box turtle, it was a large snapping turtle and they can be mean, and 3) The shoulder of the road wasn't really wide enough to stop safely and easily on. So I just swerved a bit and missed the turtle.
But then, of course, I had to look into my rear view mirror. There, behind me, was Johnny Q. Redneck, driving a large Ford pickup. Right as I looked up, he also swerved -- right into the turtle. A big splash of blood and turtle juice exploded and the now ex-turtle went flying about 5-6 feet up into the air and off into the ditch. Mr. Redneck had a girl with him, and she proceeded to flip out and start screaming at him -- they followed us for another 4 miles and she never once stopped yelling.
Well, I just don't understand that type of person. Granted, it wasn't like it was a child or something, but going out of your way to senselessly kill something, just for the hell of it...well that seems to indicate some sort of personality flaw. Accidently hitting an animal on the road is one thing, but puposefully swerving into an animal is quite another.
As we turned off the main highway onto our road, the truck turned into a local gas station. I noticed two things on the back of it -- one of those "Calvin" decals where Calvin is kneeling down and praying in front of a cross, and a slightly faded "Bush/Cheney '04" sticker. Maybe he noticed my Dennis Kucinich sticker and decided to kill what I had swerved to save. Or maybe he's just a redneck jackass. God knows there's plenty of them, no matter how they vote.