Animal Deaths

It was an unexpected joy to find your pages graced by the pen of Barry Lopez (“Implacable Corridors of Death,” Commentary, Oct. 4). Last spring on a street near our home, I watched in disbelief as the car some 50 yards ahead of me sped and swerved to deliberately hit a cat crossing the street. He succeeded and ran off as some family’s pet (of how many years?) was left in a stunned dance of death.

One wonders how much more this behavior surfaces in the anonymity of the open road. Beyond these acts of deliberation, Lopez rightly reminds us that the hundreds of thousands of accidents between cars and animals each day are the result of a way of living that we seldom call to question. In refusing to consider such things we depreciate ourselves as human beings no matter how slight or insignificant we think it may be.

RICK DUNKERLY

Whittier