We hit a dog last night...

In J. Maarten Troost's excellent book The Sex Lives of Cannibals, he relates that hitting dogs on the road was such a common occurrence during their stay in Kiribati that it warranted no more than a casual "I hit another dog today" from his girlfriend at the end of the day.

Last night when taking a cab back from eating downtown at a Japanese restaurant the cab we were in hit a dog. We weren't driving fast, and the dog came out of nowhere. I didn't see anything and had no idea why both R and the cab driver were saying "Whoa!" as we came to a hard stop, and I slid forward in the back seat. Then I saw the dog sort of doing a running somersault out of the front bumper of the car, and heard the driver shout "You should keep your dogs chained!". The driver was actually a little shook up, and we kept re-assuring him that, no you couldn't see the dog, and no he wasn't driving too fast. We stopped at the police stand on the way home to report the incident, and the bumper was pretty damaged from the dog. We saw the dog running away, so it isn't dead or paralyzed, but who knows what sort of injuries he sustained. The cab driver told us that he felt bad as he has dogs himself, and then went on to relate in surprising detail what he feeds his dogs: 500 kg of sliced fish which he boils with some salt and onions.

This is the second such incedent in as many weeks. On Christmas day we witnessed the aftermath of a dog being hit. We didn't see the accident, but we saw the car pulled over, the group of people, the still alive but injured dog lying by the side of the road, and the crying little girl.

When we watched the news that night, both incidents seemed entirely incidental when they showed images an intersection with the blood stain and flip flops of a pedestrian who had been killed in an accident. "This years road death toll stands at one." reported FijiOne.