“We remember it like it was yesterday. Slumped in the bucket seat, the rain on the windshield, the mindless chatter of sports chat on the radio, the petrol station and mini-mart off in the distance.Then out of the darkness, those eyes – big and beautiful and reflecting no thought whatsoever.And then the panic and the steel grip on the wheel and the screech of tires, followed by the view of the big black-tailed rump bounding giddily off into a nearby field.It was at that moment we realized: Bainbridge Island might need a wildlife corridor.Our timing was good – back on the city radar this month is the cross-island greenway system intended to link parks and open space for the benefit of foraging and migrating wildlife. The project was introduced in 1996, and shelved when some residents feared a new level of land-use restrictions.But as planners note in reviving the project, success depends almost entirely on volunteer land stewardship – protective easements, maintenance of habitat areas and the like. The system generally follows streams already protected from encroachments. And any land purchases would be coincidental with other open space efforts.To bring islanders back up to speed, the city planning department will host a trio of neighborhood meetings, on successive Tuesdays beginning next week. The meetings are:South end: 7 p.m. Jan. 16 at Blakely Elementary School.Central: 7 p.m. Jan. 23, at Ordway Elementary School.North end: 7 p.m. Jan. 30, at Seabold Community Hall.Planner Libby Hudson gave a presentation on the proposal at this week’s city council meeting; anyone who wants a better sense of just what a wildlife corridor is, and how it would benefit our more furry and flighty residents, might check out Baibridge Island Broadcasting’s replay of the meeting this weekend on local cable channel 6.An erstwhile Review writer may have said it best:From the perspective of wildlife, Bainbridge Island looks like an archipelago. What was one island of contiguous forest 100 years ago has become many, as the rising tide of development has surrounded natural areas in a sea of parking lots, roads and housing projects.Indeed, the more we build, the more the critters are being flushed out into the open. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a deer being mowed down on the highway, putting the lives of motorists at risk and causing significant damage to vehicles. Part of the problem, we suspect, is that deer are inordinately stupid. As noted above, we nearly clobbered one ourselves a few weeks back. Munching idly in the ditch, the silly beast looked up wide-eyed – dazzled by the bright lights of our little Subaru – and waited until precisely the last moment, for reasons understood by its species alone, to jump into the roadway in front of us.It caused us to give new thought to the wildlife corridor, and you might give it new thought too.We’re still not sure how the corridor would all knit together, and whether animals would ever stick to the correct paths is a dubious prospect at best. But if they don’t have their own lane of travel, they may wind up in yours. “