road kill

Ever had one of those experiences that shake you up from within? I had one of those this morning. Something shocking happened today morning as I was driving to office today morning. I was driving on the fast lane and saw something like a rag fluttering on the road in front of me. It took me a second to process the information; it definitely looked more animate than a rag. But instinct told me to turn my steering wheel enough to keep it from going under my wheels. As I looked in my rear view mirror my horror confirmed itself, it was a small yellow chested sparrow like bird that had probably been hit by the truck that had just passed from the other side of the road. I was probably doing 120 kmph so I could see it only for a few more seconds, but as long as I was looking at it, it was still alive and hadn’t come under anyone’s tires. it was just a few seconds of my partial attention, but the image is so vivid in my mind almost in slow motion, I could feel its pain, fright, and I also felt helpless ....helpless that I could not help it. I would have been too far from it by the time I crossed from the fast lane into the slow lane and found a safe place to stop on the hard shoulder. By then some other car would have killed it. I did not have to see the beautiful creature flattened.... I could not see it. So I drove on. Though I wish a miracle would save it. Somehow it would have the fabled nine lives of a cat and flutter away to safety. I have been fighting with myself ever since.....I was weak hearted, not willing to see it dead. The probabilistic chance of my effort to stop in the next 200 meters, walk back, stop the traffic travelling at 120kmph in a safe manner was impossible. But that is a practical thought, and I hate my practical mind in this situation.
I don’t know why I am thinking about this so much, I've seen road kill before, dead rabbits, squirrels, crows flattened on the road. my reaction then is also similar, my face winces, I think to myself "ooooh no" try to swerve so that my tire does not go over it....and drive on...I don’t think about it. I guess I'm thinking now because I saw it while it was still alive, trying to survive, and I wanted it to survive.
It’s just like reading the newspaper headlines "11 dead in a bomb blast" or "family dies in road accident", we read the headline think to ourselves..."that’s so bad" and turn the page. But I’m sure my response and action would be different if I was at the scene....if even one of the wounded was alive.
I don’t know why I’m writing this, I’m just stating obvious facts, but the image of that elegant, beautiful, delicate, yellow breasted sparrow sized bird fluttering clumsily is burning through my skull.
I wish I was god, or I was living in the matrix, I wish I could make time stop in that instant so that everyone would freeze in their tracks, I could have stopped within 5 meters of passing the bird. walked up to it, picked it up, without it fluttering away and hurting itself even more in its reflex to stay away from captivity, and then driven it to safety of a veterinary hospital.

food for thought: I tried searching statistics on this, strangely enough I could only get US figures and was even more shocked "Every year in the US alone experimenters kill 100 million lab animals, hunters kill 200 million "game" animals, and motorists kill nearly 400 million road animals."