I had been seeking for some time, the impetus to write a piece on the continuing massacre of God's four-legged creatures on the stretches of asphalt carpet that make up the by-ways and lay-bys of this blessed country; but no adequate motivation presented itself until I read recently about Anissa Chattergoon's love affair with her four-legged 'children'. It is this woman's devotion to man's best friend that has (finally) inspired me to speak to an issue that has been gnawing away at me like a dog at an old bone.

Here's the back story. My car had just been returned to me, serviced, souped-up and gliding like pontoons on placid waters, when on a short-cut to La Canoa, trying to avoid the bumper to bumper grind of homeward bound, Saddle Road traffic, I heard a shouting: "Toby, Toby; here boy…come here, Toby. Toby come back here now!" I looked to my right for a nano-second, just in time to see a little ball of off-white fur, fly by. Even before I heard the thud and felt the brief rise and fall of the front tyres as they tapped and then rolled over Toby, I knew it was all over for him. I screamed when he yelped and I slammed on the brakes knowing that this little, living thing though faster than my reflexes was not fast enough for a larger, four-wheel creature propelled by a 2.5 litre engine.

My right leg shook uncontrollably as I wondered in the seconds after the impact, where/if he was (under the car) and if I dared take my foot off the brake. Toby's master ran into the road and tossed a bad eye my way that would have killed me, surely, if looks alone could.

Several bare-backed youths, one with a straw sticking out of his mouth, laughed. Toby's master, a mature woman clad only in a black whole slip, picked up her twitching 'toy' breed with one hand and with the other fisted, pounded the hood of my car and shouted, "What the #*$+&@# (reference to my mother's posterior) wrong with you? Yuh firetrucking bline or wha?" I rolled down my window saying repeatedly, 'so sorry, so sorry…', put the gear in park and was about the get out when a voice, not my own, said, "Miss lady, drive yuh car oui; yuh done kill the dog ah ready."

I hesitated for a moment but given Toby's master's dispossessed demeanour, I thought it best to heed the advice of the Samaritan voice. The entire incident unfolded in less than two minutes, just about the patience-threshold of the other drivers lined up behind me, as blaring car horns brought me back into my orbit.

I drove off slowly until I found a shoulder in the road, where I stopped and allowed my thoughts to idle with the engine as the words rang over and over in my head, "…yuh done kill the dog ah ready, yuh done kill the dog ah ready." In those minutes parked on the shoulder I thought about how often I had washed my mouth on other drivers for their callous indifference to creatures trying to negotiate their way across the nation's roads and highways, running them over like debris or refuse fallen from the back of a garbage truck. Now here I was, having perpetrated (completely accidentally) my first 'road kill' and feeling utterly, desperately sick about it.

While the Toby incident haunted me for some time; I was/am still determined to find a way to assert myself as an advocate for 'the rights of animals as road users'. There must be, I thought, some way to appeal to the sensibilities of drivers who generally exercise more caution when navigating potholes, speed bumps and tyre shrapnel, than they do when they encounter living, breathing animals that stray into their path. What manner of petition could I proffer to the driving public to please have a care for animals crossing, when even people like Vonetta Boneo, are run over and dismembered by the savagery that masquerades for driving in a country where a large percentage of the adult population is mobile and many (it seems) menacingly so?

Then one scorching Saturday afternoon (not long after the Toby tragedy), on the way home near the WASA substation in Maraval, I found my opportunity to 'fight', in the plight of an injured iguana. Straddling the white line dividing the lanes was a large lizard, the likes of which I hadn't seen in years. It was a shade of green only to be found in nature: perfect in all respects but one, a crushed front leg that had rendered it immobile. The amazing thing is that this not-so-little lizard had managed to stop the flow of traffic in both directions, as drivers alighted their cars (some horns blaring), a few in awe but most just annoyed by and inured to the plight of the injured creature.

Then two young men jumped from the back of an open-tray truck a few cars down, one of them shouting, "Ah boy…river lime." I knew instantly what that meant and without thinking put my gear in park, turned on my hazard indicator and this time, ignored the voice in my head and ran to the reptile. There were no heroics on my part, just a frantic call to a veterinarian friend with whom I pleaded to just get there as fast as he could.

As the two young men drew closer and the car horns grew louder, an older man emerged from behind an ivy-covered gate in one of the houses secreted by the abundant verdence along the banks of the Maraval River. He looked at the lizard, then at me and said, 'Lady 'guana does only stay so when dey sick. That cyah stay in de middle ah de road." I was about to tell him that a vet was on the way when he grabbed 'lizzie' by the tail and carried it squirming into his yard. When my friend the vet arrived some time later, he confirmed what the senior has said. The iguana was sick, likely dying, and should be left (he thought) for nature to take its course. These two incidents have moved me to ask: at what point in our journey on board the arc destined for developed-nation status, did we decide to leave the animals behind? How did we arrive at the junction of callous indifference and wanton disregard for lives whose worth we have (apparently) calculated at a value far less than our own? Has this insidious apathy towards animals been eclipsed by the seemingly endless stream of human lives lost to violent crime and gang warfare, and counted casually as collateral damage? On the surface of things one might readily conclude, yes; and if yes (though I pray not) then what is the cure? While I may feel (for the most part) powerless to stem the tide of human blood-letting; I believe I have some capacity (nigh, an obligation) to try to reduce the carnage that continues to claim the lives of these 'lesser' creatures. I'll start with a simple, time-honoured technique which I trust will bear results once I remain consistent and persistent. I am simply asking, pleading: please, when you can, if you can, without imperiling your own life or the life of another (human) …do have a care for these creatures small and…please pause for paws.