This CNN deer-jumping video summons a traumatic event that I’ve been suppressing for the last nine days. I was driving my rental car on a dark country road in Denia, the Spanish port town located a half-hour south of Valencia, around 10 pm or so, and going about 30 or 35 kph when I suddenly hit a dog. A smallish mutt ran right in front of me….whump. He/she was chasing a dark cat, which had run in front of the car a split second earlier. There was no time to stop. Over before I had a chance to react.

The dog wasn’t killed — it ran down the road and into the brush three or four seconds later — but you know how adrenaline works. Howling and crying, obviously badly hurt. There was nothing to do or say, but every time my mind flashed on it over the remainder of the Spain trip I shuddered. The accidental, blame-free, unavoidable nature doesn’t matter. The fact of an animal suffering because of something I did, however unwittingly…

We all feel awful over the hurtful things we’ve done, whether they were our fault or not. I’ll never get over my having beaten a turtle when I was seven or eight with a heavy stick and causing its shell to bleed. I’d had a nightmare about being bitten by a snapping turtle and I thought that the turtle I ran into might be a dangerous cousin of some kind. A stupid little-kid thing to have done, but I’ve never forgotten it or gotten over it.