On my way into work the other morning, I saw two Silverthorne police officers on the side of the highway, standing over what appeared to be a dead coyote.
One cop held a shotgun. The image told me the entire story.
My heart ached for the beautiful wild animal, as it does whenever I see a dead deer, raccoon, porcupine or other critter on the road.
Contrast that with my trip up from Denver just the evening before, as I drove up Interstate 70 near Genessee. The setting sun left me virtually blind to the point that I slowed to about 45 miles per hour and could barely make out the white line on the right shoulder to guide me.
Completely invisible in the glare was a hitchhiker on the shoulder. I didn’t see him until it was too late, but fortunately I was safely passing him. I swore loudly at the dummy who would stand in such a dangerous place, particularly at that treacherous time of day.
Before I could even stop my cursing, I swooshed past yet another hitchhiker a quarter-mile further up the road, also completely lost in the direct sunlight. This one actually was standing in the right lane for extra attention, prompting me to swerve and push angrily on my horn.
“Those (bleeping) idiots deserve to be hit,” I finally sputtered after regaining my composure.
Now, I like to think that I’m a compassionate person, and of course I would not actually have wanted to turn one of those hitchhikers into a messy hood ornament, for many reasons — and because I don’t want to have to fill out the paperwork.
But I have to admit that my concern toward other humans in the abstract is so much less than my care for animals.
I saw the coyote as helpless, a victim of a careless or maybe even vengeful motorist, or perhaps of its own bad decision. I felt that it didn’t deserve to die in agony on the highway, its last vision a cop standing over it with a gun to put it out of its misery.
Humans, on the other hand, I believe are fully capable of sentient actions, even if all too often we fail to use our “superior” intelligence. (Just watch a television program — pretty much any television program — for evidence of this on display.)
I found myself thinking that if one of those hitchhikers had been clobbered by a passing vehicle, I would have chalked it up to natural selection and likely felt not even a pang of sympathy.
I’m not alone in this feeling: A study released by the American Sociological Association last year indicated that most people feel greater empathy toward dogs than other humans.
Northeastern University sociology professors Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke reported that we are far more disturbed by accounts of abused dogs and babies — due to their vulnerability and dependency — than we are about abused adults.
So the news last week that a man who ditched his dog not once but twice at the Denver Animal Shelter — driving away while his loyal dog chased after him — only reinforced my view that animals are far more worthy beings than some humans.
(Daniel Sohn is scheduled to appear in Denver court on July 2 on allegations of animal cruelty and neglect. The dog, named Bronson, apparently was abandoned for good in Los Angeles after jumping out of Sohn’s car, according to the account that Sohn gave to 7News.)
Of course, if given the dilemma of having to choose between saving either a human or an animal in equal peril, undoubtedly I would try to save the human first.
But I definitely would think twice about it.
Steve Lipsher (slipsher@comcast.net) of Silverthorne writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.
