It was rainy and warm this morning. Ideal weather for finding a turtle on the move this time of year. I even made a point of going back in the house to grab a rain jacket in case I came across one of the local eastern box turtles on the road in need of a hand.

I found one, a fully grown adult, sitting at the edge of the blacktop a few hundred yards from the turn out from my neighborhood. Three massive cracks in his shell, no response to stimuli. I’m guessing he took a glancing blow from a tire – enough pressure to crack the shell, but not enough to crush him. I’m not sure why I bothered to check if he was alive after seeing the damage done. Even if it weren’t the still early hours of the morning, there’s no place within an hour’s drive that could have treated him. I suppose I could have at least offered a quick end to his suffering.

Two more miles on, there was another, splitting the double yellow line. This one was crushed beyond any reason to consider stopping. I drove on, with quietly building rage leaching out into every cell of my not insubstantial body.

Look, I’m a carnivore. I don’t have any moral objection to steak or bacon. Killing an animal for sustenance is an act as old as our species. If you’re going to kill something, you’d damned well better have the intention of eating it, though. Otherwise, you’re just a sick fuck getting his rocks off on causing pain and suffering because you can.

Turtles are the very definition of a harmless animal – they don’t destroy your crops or your yard. They aren’t going to eat your cat or endanger your livestock. Their only mission in life is to walk around foraging for their next meal and making little turtles. That’s it. One, or probably both of these boxies was killed by someone who had to make the conscious decision to do so. The fact that it’s illegal to drag this kind of person out of their vehicle and beat them to bloody death with a tire iron is what I consider possibly the biggest flaw in the American legal system.

I’ve seen articles that say climate change could wipe out humanity or at least kill us off by the billions… frankly that doesn’t sound like the worst possible outcome I could imagine.