It’s a beautiful day with birds chirping and a person biking down a hill. So peaceful and calming. That is until a squirrel quickly sprints across the street at lightening speed. The biker has no time to stop. These frightening events are exactly what happened to Shayna Soloway, sophomore, when she crashed her bike into a squirrel.

Q: What happened leading up to the crash itself?
A: I was on my bike and I was just going mainly around my old neighborhood but if you exit my neighborhood there’s a big hill, so I [had gone] up the hill and was about to go down and there was a squirrel that was crossing the road but I didn’t see it. So [since] I was going down the hill, I couldn’t stop and the squirrel was there and I hit the squirrel.

Q: How would you describe this experience? Why?
A: Traumatizing. The noise and the feeling of going over the squirrel. It was like hitting a bump but it squashed and cracked, Shayna said with a grossed out expression.

Q: What did you do with the squirrel after the crash?
A: After I hit the squirrel, I stopped my bike. I was probably crying; I don’t remember. But I looked over at it because I didn’t know if it was alive and it was dead, so I just got back on my bike and I rolled home.

Q: Do you still think about the squirrel?
A: Sometimes. When I’m riding my bike I’m a lot more careful to look out for animals so this doesn’t happen again.

Q: Were there any other physical damages?
A: The bike didn’t get injured at all. Neither did I, except mentally. It was terrifying. I didn’t know what happened at first and then I was like ‘oh my gosh! That squirrel’s death is on my hands.'”

Q: What would be your warning to others so this doesn’t happen to anyone else?
A: Make sure you check your surroundings before you go down hill and always be mindful of of where you are. Squirrels are very fast so they can catch you off guard really easily. Animals don’t know to look both ways, but you do so be sure to be safe and be careful.

What Soloway did was almost exactly the right thing to do according to bicycling.com. If the animal ran over is killed, move the creature off the road and let nature take its course. Soloway’s experience is one that she finds difficult to forget. This same situation is one many others have experienced as well.