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Great American Road Trip: More road kill woes and how to clean a car
The first mishap was when we nailed a possum in Illinois east of Chicago the first night of our road trip to Montana. The critter was lumbering across the interstate about 10:30 p.m. That was a sad moment.
Thursday, driving to and from Regent, North Dakota we had several sad moments. Honestly, there are some things that can't be avoided.
I already posted about the two pheasants we hit. The chipmunk and the blackbird came later.
We didn't hit them all at once, but over the course of several miles. Such is one of the realities of traveling on small two-lane highways--but this was ridiculous. Particularly when two raccoons made a mad dash in front of us as I was typing the previous sentence. The second one didn't make it.
With each thump, I'm shouting out from the passenger seat, a strangled "Arggh!" Seriously, it was a nightmare. "That's one way to damage a car," I said.
"It's not like I'm trying to hit them," said my husband. It's true, he wasn't, and swerving too much is dangerous. He pointed out the deep ditch on the side of the road.
My son, the six-year-old wanted to stop for feathers and fur.
My daughter wanted to know why I'm making such an awful sound.
Turns out, I was onto something. While my husband was filling the gas tank in Miles City, Montana after dropping us off at a McDonald's so our son could let off steam at the indoor playland, one of the pheasants was still with us. It had broken the grill a tad--just big enough to become wedged behind it.
Two truckers, noticing the predicament, exchanged their road kill tales with my husband and helped him figure out how to remove it. The windshield squeegee handle was somehow involved. I didn't want the specific details.
When my husband showed up at the McDonald's parking lot with the pheasant in a plastic bag with grand plans of showing it to our friend in Billings, I shouted, "Arggh!" and ran in the opposite direction. "No dead things in the car. Absolutely not," I shouted from where I stood, still ready to flee if he stepped one foot closer. I hate dead things.
The pheasant was left in a garbage can in Miles City. There are a couple feathers in another bag behind the driver's seat, but I'm trying not to think about them.
A woman told us, as she was sliding into her truck after hearing about our pheasant mishap, "Watch out for deer."
The photo is of my son trailing his hand out the window for a moment to catch raindrops, one of the pleasant aspects of the day. Not pheasant--pleasant.
Filed under: Stories, Transportation, Budget Travel
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Secret Asian Man Jul 15th 2008 3:36PM
I've been on a lot of road trips and have seen a lot of road kills. I've never actually hit anything though there were many close calls.
However, I did witness one spectacular carnage while driving through Nebraska. I was behind a truck on the left lane when I saw a deer pop out of the left shoulder. I was still far back so I just slowed a bit. But the truck ahead of me on the right lane kept going full speed and hit the deer s it sprinted across the right lane. The good news was the deer never knew what hit it as it was so quick. The bad news was that the resulting collision resulted in the deer exploding from the huge impact. I'm serious. It exploded. Guts flying out and spewing everywhere. I had to swerve right to hide behind the truck and avoid the pulverized venison scraps from hitting my car.
That's why I hate highways that have trees or dense vegetation too close to the shoulders. It makes it easy for animals to pop out without warning. I don't think animals are that dumb as to willingly cross into incoming cars. Odds are they couldn't see us either because of the dense vegetation.
On the other hand, highways where the shoulders have a good 10-20 feet or more clearance from vegetation are better because we can see the animals easier before they cross and they can see us. Which gives us plenty of time to slow down and the animals to cross safely.
I also prefer to avoid driving at night for similar reasons. Its harder to see at night. Plus, I think animals tend to cross more at night or dusk/dawn.
Baron Jul 15th 2008 4:30PM
Well, I disagree, many times the animals are that "dumb", which I say in quotes because I think they are just really confused and don't know what to do in the situation, rather than any sense of how dumb or smart they are. I've hit a few things, some of them looking straight at me while they walk/run out into the road. I've spun my car around twice avoiding deer that watched me from the side of the road, as I slowed and watched them and then they run in front of the car. You really want to watch out for them b/c they can certainly come through the window and hurt/kill you.
The only really crazy day of hitting things would be a few years back when I was working on a farm about 21 miles from my house. I drove my old truck most days and I never hit anything, until one day. It must have been something in the air or the time of day/year, but in one 21 mile drive on a dirt road, I hit 7 birds. Most were starlings, a few were blackbirds. Two of them actually hit the antenna on the car and pooffed into feathers.