roadkill cafes

“People joke about “Roadkill cafés” where a rural entrepreneur extends the meat budget. Armadillos are famous for “jumping to their deaths” because when scared they leap straight up–right into a speeding vehicle.

Running into deer makes roadkill of drivers, too. Certain stretches of Texas roads are notorious for the numbers of roadkilled deer. When Deborah and I were returning from San Antonio last week we saw eight deer between Big Lake and Garden City. In the last 20 minutes of evening twilight a driver can not see deer grazing in the bar ditches until the animal panics and bolts. We were lucky–the eight we saw bolted in the direction of the fence, not us, but we slowed way, way down, anyway.

We have witnessed the phenomenon we call “Death Crossings.” Within 2 miles of our rural house two locations constantly have fresh roadkill. One is the “hill” where our beloved roadrunner “Magoosh” died. Foxes and skunks are often killed there, too.

The other location is down in a playa. On one side of the road is a dense Siberian elm and mesquite forest and a huge caliche pit. On the other side of the road is a pecan orchard. The death toll at that location includes raccoons, porcupines, owls, hawks, roadrunners, foxes, skunks, snakes, and coyotes. Smaller birds die there, too. The location is a magnet for wildlife–rainwater often collects in the caliche pit and the area is full of the small animals the predators hunt.

Such “Death Crossings” usually have a logical ecological explanation. The death crossing on the hill is a little more difficult to explain. The “hill” is only a few feet higher than the surrounding land. To the south is a housing development, but to the north some mesquite pasture remains (including ours.) Foxes, skunks, and roadrunners are omnivores and find plenty of food items in rural settlements. The mesquite pastureland provides denning and nesting sites.

In 1976 the United States Fish and Wildlife published the results of a scientific study that calculated the numbers of birds that die on American roads. After surveying 1,000 miles of road in the 48 continental states, they estimated that around 200 million birds died every year as the result of collisions with vehicles. With 100 million more people in the country, the numbers have skyrocketed, I am sure.  I am surprised that none of the animal welfare groups have ever mounted a “public outcry.”
Another report I found on the Internet reported that one county in the Texas Hill Country had 1,514 deer killed in one year along its roads. Most of them were killed during the rutting season of the fall. One February I counted 58 dead skunks between Brady and Llano, TX. February is skunk mating season.

Such a public outcry probably has not occurred because there is a perception that not a thing that can be done. For some species of migrating animals special overpasses have been built (in Alaska and Canada), and in a few locations in the northeastern United States brief road closures are observed for the sake of a rare species of turtle. For zero roadkill, every road would have to be enclosed in a tunnel of screenwire.

Unfortunately some roadkill is purposeful. I have witnessed people swerving to hit turtles, snakes, and tarantulas. Years ago a friend and I stopped on Interstate 20 near Eastland to move a big Red-eared Slider off the road, but before we could a big rig’s driver swerved to hit it. We figured the driver was a trotline fisherman who had lost many a catfish to water turtles. When I worked as a doodlebugger, one of the vibrator-truck drivers loved to squish snakes with the shakers–every snake to him was evil and dangerous.
Some dead roadside animals are not the result of being struck by a vehicle. Dead goats, dogs and calves have been dumped on the gravel road that leads to our rural property. Once, when out night driving (a favorite activity of amateur herpetologists and now illegal), I ran into a father and son who shot every animal they could spotlight on the road.

When asked why, the father replied, “It’s great target practice!” He told me to get lost, that he wasn’t hurting anybody when I told him it was illegal. I took his license plate and called it in to both the game warden and the sheriff’s office when I returned home (this was before the day of the cellphone). A few months later the two were arrested when a deputy witnessed their “fun.”

Ever since the invention of barbed wire, some landowners have proudly displayed the predators they killed on their property along the fence next to their gate. It is not done nearly as often as it used to be, but I still see a few “hung up to dry.” One landowner that I met claimed that the rotting carcasses warned other predators away. Although such displays are not roadkill, it is another gruesome sight along our roads.

I have met scientists that study roadkill. One was a graduate student studying intestinal parasites. She bagged everything and tossed in to the back of her pickup and then took them back to a walk-in freezer. Another individual studied external parasites, and if the carcass of a roadkilled animal was still warm, he would lift the roadkill onto the tailgate of his pickup where he had a spotlight rigged to give illumination.

A Mountain Lion researcher once asked the game wardens in the state to report every roadkilled Mountain Lion. In a few years time, almost every county in the state reported at least one. Emmy Ulmschneider, a Texas Master Naturalist and the mastermind of the Carver Center’s Diversity Garden, has asked local naturalists to examine their radiator grills for butterflies so she can create a collection for her students to use when identifying butterflies in the garden.

Most folks hate hitting an animal when driving. It is always a gutwrenching experience. The worst incident for me was when I hit two burrowing owls in the space of a mile. I have spun out when braking to avoid hitting a deer. I witnessed a minor fender-bender when a driver swerved to miss a Prairie Dog. The accident led the corporate landowner to eliminate the Prairie Dog town next to the road.

Be careful out there on the roads.