What I want to do is: stop small animals from dying in roadside accidents. Me and my friends will spread out on highways and catch foxes before they run into traffic. It will not be legal for a while. We will have tetanus shots. Some of us will wear gloves, but not the most dedicated. Myself, I will try to forge a connection with each animal I catch. There will be something communicated, personally, in each touch of fur, etc. I will try to warn them about coming back. I will get scars. I will develop a tolerance to anti-inflammatory drugs. Cars will honk their horns at me. I will be interviewed by a local reporter for a story about the sudden decrease in roadkill. I will say the words “needless slaughter.” A long scar from my nose to the side of my mouth will not be mysterious enough to make me exactly telegenic. Women will find me conspicuously clean-shaven. The governor will wonder if my rabies can be communicated by handshake. I will not have rabies. Chapters will open elsewhere in the state. The governor will recall my interview. I will get a cell phone call from an unrecognized number and put down a raccoon. I will be appointed head of the Bureau of Roadkill Prevention, or BRP. The execution of the BRP’s duties will prevent the creation of a more sensitive name. Or, I will not care. I will have too many fringe chapters to control. I will now be faced with preserving the delicate balance between car and animal. I will have to persuade new BRP members that, while maybe ethically commendable, it is not possible to stop traffic every time a mouse wants to cross the street. I will become frustrated by explaining right of way to non-humans, or humans who are not my friends. I will return to the part of my job that is actually preventing animals from being hit by cars with greater enthusiasm. I will become slightly reckless in running out into traffic to rescue animals. I will get hurt on the job: a mirror to the arm, a skunk thrown to safety. I will spend a short time in the hospital. A psychologist will be unnecessarily consulted. He will write that my reliance on ibuprofen is unhealthy, but won’t kill me tomorrow, and that it is peculiar that dogs follow me in town. He will be good to talk to, but won’t make a diagnosis. Anyways, neither of those things will have anything to do with psychology, although they sort of will. In my absence, the BRP will come close to dissolution. My friends will have, by then, given up on the organization, and on roadkill saving in general. Mostly, these people will not tell me why they’ve left: we will just no longer be friends. Some will tell me that they don’t want to fail anymore: they have lost too many animals to cars, and it is so hard to be with them when they die, and even when you don’t fail, they bite you. It is easier, they will say, to never see them at all. I will tell them that you still see them. They are ground into hamburg by strangers. They are there for a second, and then behind you, still dead, there to be taken away or ground into finer hamburg by more strangers. They will ask me if I want to be roadkill, too, and the execution of my duties will prevent me from giving a sensitive answer.