There is a lot of road kill in Florida. Is it because we have more wild life than other places or is it because Florida has some of the world's worst drivers? Either way you can be sure you will see at least one dead "body" a day resting in the middle of the road. These poor creatures don't even have a chance to get to the other side of the road. They are just flattened right in the middle of three lanes of either highway or local road.
A couple of weeks ago I was going out some place and came out of my community and right on to the entrance ramp of Rt. 95. Right there in the center of the entrance ramp was a dead(?) alligator. Just a little guy, maybe 4 feet long. It took me a second to register ALLIGATOR before I went around it and then checked my rear view mirror to see if the poor thing was moving. It did appear to be dead but it was gone when I returned later that day. I bet there is some local with new alligator boots!
Most of the road kill does not disappear quite that fast. In fact there are times when there is a major pile up of road kill. It all starts when one poor creature, usually a possum or raccoon, tries to cross the road. They get nailed by a passing car and the remains are left for the turkey vultures. I think the turkey vulture is the Florida national bird as there are THOUSANDS of them. There are times when we have to check our pulse to make sure we are alive because there are 20 or so vultures circling our house. These birds are large and to say they are UGLY would be a compliment. Anyway, the vultures immediately show up when there is a dead animal in the road. The vulture is not only ugly but it is STUPID because they swoop down to have dinner on the road kill and within minutes they have become a second course for the next vulture that arrives. By the end of the day there is a dead raccoon and 12 vultures laying in the road, feathers and fur flying every where. (I did exaggerate there, the vultures will land and then do their hop-skip-fly thing to try to get out of the way of the passing cars. Most times folks do NOT want road kill stuck to their tires and will do almost anything to avoid the already dead creatures so the vultures are fairly safe.)
The reason I got writing about this today was that G and I were coming home from the doctor today and got stopped by a traffic light near our house. I had been stopped at this same light last Thursday and saw that a raccoon had been hit and killed just at the stop light. (Guess he didn't wait for the green :-) ) At the time he was still fairly fresh and you could easily identify him/her as a raccoon. Today, 6 days later, Mr. Raccoon was not looking too good. He was more of a large lump with sort of a tail sticking out and a lot of other nasty brown mess. As we sat at the light I pointed the road kill out to Ger and teased him about stopping to pick it up for lunch. Ger's comment was, "I don't want SNAKE for lunch". HA HA, funny guy but if that was a snake it had to be a 30 foot Burmese Python because it was a LARGE lump. Now maybe because I had seen the poor deceased animal last week and KNEW that it was raccoon it did not look anything like a snake to me. That was the start of the discussion for the next 10 minutes. What specie is the road kill? It's actually a good game and one that only ends when one of you gets out of the car and pokes at the remains, much to the irritation of the other drivers.
And speaking of crossing the road . . . . Why did the boy cross the play ground?
TO GET TO THE OTHER SLIDE ! Thanks to Kaelin for that one!
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