Road Kill. or ‘A Lapin Lament’

 

I was driving down the highway and with nothing on my mind,

The traffic moving slowly and with quite a queue behind,

When a rabbit with a death wish or a suicidal bent,

Came rushing from the hedgerow and beneath my wheels it went.

 

The bump it raised the front wheel and then the rear one too,

And stopping rather quickly I first wondered what to do,

Concluding that I must at least make sure that it was dead,

I wandered down the tarmac to the growing stain of red.

 

The suicidal rabbit had succeeded in its aim,

The wheels I checked were quite intact, the bodywork the same,

And then I noticed curiously that littered here and there,

Were the fur and feathered bodies of the common and the rare.

 

In one place was a badger with his teeth bared in a smile,

A weasel lay in cold repose and he'd been there a while,

A brace of pheasants, 'separate' had played their little game,

And here a sort of something that I simply couldn't name.

 

I pondered that were things so bad that fauna from the field,

Were coming to the highway for their little lives to yield,

Were they waiting up the banking behind each bush and stump,

The manic hare the half crazed fox just waiting there to jump.

 

I walked back to my vehicle the thought still in my head,

I drove to work down country lanes and counted up the dead,

A hedgehog here a tomcat there a pigeon rook and crow,

It seems these rural suicides are everywhere I go.

 

A call to the Samaritans, perhaps the N.F.U.,

E-Mail the R.S.P.C.A and find out what to do,

This carnage cannot go unchecked, cry scandal to the air,

Am I the only motorist with mind enough to care.

 

For soon it will be sheep and cows all getting in the act,

The horses and the threatened breeds will form a solemn pact,

Then deer and pigs will all unite and leap from walls and trees,

The traffic of society brought swiftly to its knees.

 

But then I'm playing mind games and these dead are best forgot,

They just clutter up the highway and they lay there till they rot,

So I squashed another rabbit just a lapin fading star,

And I'm glad it wasn't anything that wrecked the bloody car.