ohmidog!

We’ve carried many a report on humans who have risked, and in some cases sacrificed, their lives to save their dogs, or to rescue dogs they’ve never even met from life-threatening circumstances.

But dogs, while they may be the animal we most often hear about being saved by a caring human, aren’t the only ones that bring out the hero in us.

Edward Gardner, of Naperville, Ill., pulled over to help a family of ducks cross a highway Monday night. He was struck and killed by a passing vehicle, WLS-TV in in Chicago reported.

As we’ve been pointing out in recent posts, it’s baby duck season, and humans can get pretty protective when it comes to ducks, especially babies.

Just the other day, a friend was telling me about being part of a crowd that gathered near a traffic circle outside the city of Baltimore to coax a mother duck and her babies out from under a stopped school bus and across the street.

Maybe it’s having lived 15 or so years in Yardley, Pa. — home of the bumper sticker “I Brake for Ducks in Yardley” — but my reasoning, old fashioned as it may be, is that animals, wild and otherwise, were here before we came up with motor vehicles, and thus should get right of way.

Of course, our world — particularly in places like Chicago — has gotten too fast paced for that.

Humans going to the aid of animals is a nice thing to hear about — especially given all the reports we bring you here of people abusing animals. It’s nice to know, if a little confusing, that, despite the of cruelty to which some humans go, when it comes to animals, there are others reaching true heights of kindness.

And it’s sad when, as is sometimes the case, those stories have a tragic outcome, like Gardner’s.

Police said Gardner died after being hit by a limousine along the Tri-state Tollway in Schiller Park. Illinois State Police say the limousine driver has not been cited.

“It was no surprise what he did, that he would risk his life to save another. That’s the kind of guy he was. Just an amazing spirit,” said his best friend, Jim Gollwitzer.

Gardner loved animals, Gollwitzer said, and working on cars. He was on his way to work on a vehicle he was restoring when he spotted the ducks.

Fellow members of his car club are finishing his car project for him to honor his memory, said Gollwitzer.

He deserves that, and more.