Road Kill

Harvest season is upon us. For my community, that means lots of tractors on the back roads and myriad wild animals skulking through the fields to eat the remains of what the machines left behind. Last week I hit baby raccoon on one of these roads as I sped along (albeit, obviously too fast). I felt horrible about it. I swear, they wait until they see a car, and then make a beeline for the road. I don’t get it.

This morning, I was driving along minding my own business, and a bird flew into the upper right quadrant of my windshield. It hit with a thud and went bouncing off behind me. Lovely. Just up the way, the road was covered in, literally, thousands of black birds eating the corn off the road, scattered there from farm equipment, I suppose. I slowed down and marveled as swarms of the birds flew up around my car. Not only did I not get any bird poop on my car, I didn’t hit a single one of them. It was incredible. I can only assume that the bird I had hit earlier was full and incapacitated from all the corn it had consumed. Or maybe it was myopic. I’m not sure.

I saw a mom and baby deer eating carrots or some other vegetable in a recently harvested field. It was really cool. And I’m happy to report that I didn’t hit them.