Stopping for Roadkill

 You couldn’t miss the dead dog out on the county road. 

  I eased over to the side of the road and got out.  The canine’s fur was blowing in the breeze.  The coloring looked like some kind of mixed breed mutt, then I saw it’s face:  Someone had cut down a coyote.  The eyes were fixed straight ahead…its teeth were bared.  I grabbed it by the tail and pulled it off the road. 

  I have this thing about roadkill.  I feel kind of bad about the dead critter, the indignity of being smooshed by passing cars and trucks over and over again.

  In my day I’ve pulled bunches of dead critters off the road:  Dogs, cats, roadrunners, squirrels, turtles and such.

    I don’t do this for skunks and I probably won’t move a javelina off the road again.

  Javelinas are critters that look like pigs but aren’t pigs…they’re a peccary.  A peccary is a critter that looks like a skinny pig.  They range in the southern parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.  Some years ago I came across a dead one on the highway between Bisbee and Tombstone, Arizona so I pulled over to get it off the road.  I was doing it for my usual reason but these buggers are so big, maybe 80 to 100 pounds, so it was kind of a road hazard too.  I grabbed the carcass by a back leg and started to drag it off the road.

  That’s when all its guts spilled out on the highway.

  I kept pulling the dead javelina to the side of the road anyway.

  I figured some guts on the highway were less of a road hazard than a carcass of bone and muscle.

  Sometimes I can’t do anything about roadkill, sometimes I won’t.

  One time when I was driving truck across the country with my Trinidadian co-driver Frank we encountered a big dead critter.

  We were eastbound on Interstate 40 near Flagstaff, Arizona.  I was driving, Frank was riding shotgun.  Up ahead in the median there was a headless elk carcass….bloated…its legs sticking in the air.

  “Well I wonder what happened there?” I said.

  Frank looked up.

  “Ooo, ooo!” he exclaimed.  “Pull over!  I shall have the haunches off that.”

  “First, Frank, it’s bloated and has been in the sun…”

  “That just means the meat’s aged, pull over!”

  “Frank, I’m not pulling over.”  I chuckled a bit with the image of two truckers pulling over, hopping out of their 18-wheeler and hacking on a bloated elk carcass with Swiss army knives.  “As far as I know it’s against the law to hack on a big game carcass along the interstate.  Besides, where would you put the haunches?”

  “Under my bunk,” said Frank.  “I do not understand why you will not pull over.  That is a waste of perfectly good meat.”

  “Dude,” I said.  “It’s just not done.”

  “In Trinidad that would be considered wasteful.”

  So we continued our trek east.  Frank was quite convinced I was wrong and did not speak to me for a couple of hours.

  It was okay.  I enjoyed the quiet.

  And I was just glad Frank hadn’t been driving when we saw the dead elk.

 Now I’m not saying I clear off roadkill regular-like, I’m not saying I’d fight the vultures off a carcass to get it off the road or block traffic or anything.  I’m just saying every now and then when I see some dead animal on the highway I take a notion to get it off the road.  Then the vultures can do what vultures do.  Nobody’s ever hassled me about it, one time two guys even wanted to help, though for an unexpected reason.

  A few years ago I was heading down a long stretch of Arizona highway between Bisbee and Douglas when an animal carcass caught my eye.  Now I’ve seen a lot of dead animals along the road but not a spotted one.  As I sped by I couldn’t tell what it was.  I was curious.  I made a u-turn, drove back a bit then pulled over near the thing.  It was a dead bobcat, not a mark on it.

  This cat was a magnificent thing, probably three or four times the size of a big house cat.  The eyes were fixed and there were those teeth, big cat teeth.  The paws were huge, each one easily as big as the palm of my hand.  It was probably just easing across the road, got smacked and died.

  I grabbed the cat by a paw and was dragging it off into the desert when I heard tires squeal on the highway.  I looked up and saw a pickup truck make a u-turn and pull up behind my car.

  Just when I was thinking I must’ve broken some kind of wildlife law or something, expecting a game warden hop out, the doors flew open and two cowboys came running at me fast, holding their hats on their heads.

  “Hey buddy, whatcha got there?” said the guy in the lead.

  “It’s a bobcat,” I said.  I wondered what these guys were up to.

  “Woo-wee,” yelled the second one, “Lookit that thing.  Can we have a look?”

  “Sure,” I said.  I realized this wasn’t about hassling or laws or anything, these guys were really interested in this dead bobcat.  “Is it a big one?”

  “You bet,” said one.

  “Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” said the other.  “Can we have it?”

  I paused for a moment.

  This was a first for me, someone wanted an animal carcass I was pulling off the road.

  Were they going to eat it?

  “Well sure,” I said.  “I mean…it isn’t mine, I was just getting it off the road.”

  One guy looked up at me and squinted, “You’re just getting’ it off the road?  You ain’t from around here, are you.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Skin it.  We can get big coin for this pelt.”  And with that they each grabbed a paw, ran back to the pickup truck, tossed the dead bobcat in back, hopped in and took off.

  At least they weren’t going to eat it, I thought as I watched them fade off in the distance.