Requiem For A Mallard

Now Serving Pressed Duck A L'Asphalt

I usually don't get worked up over roadkill. Heck, I used to make a game out of counting how many road pizzas I saw on I-45 when I was traveling regularly between Dallas & Houston.

I've seen all manner of car vs. animal blacktop grudge matches. Almost 100% of the time, the car wins, but every so often the animal gets some good licks in. There was the guy in my dorm at SFASU who hit a buzzard on a backcountry East Texas road. The buzzard had fed just a bit too much on some ripe dead thing in the road, and due to excess takeoff weight was unable to gain enough altitude before impact. It went in through the windshield clear to the backseat, then vomited up several pints of semidigested roadkill before expiring. The smell was such that the car had to be totaled after several attempts at steam cleaning. As he said; "There's a reason they're called 'Fowl'".

Then there was the Winnebago/hog collision where some retiree going way too fast on yet another backcountry road impaled his northbound Mobile Motel onto a southbound boar hog, and the resulting gaping wound in the 'bago looked like a torpedo strike on a destroyer. A hog's a dense heavy-boned animal, and if it had survived the experience, Mr. Oinker would have found himself sitting in the camper's dinette set after tearing through the bumper, radiator, A/C compressor, right front suspension, firewall, entry door & stairwell, and half the kitchenette's floor.

My friend Chainsawed's Toyota has a perfect imprint of a deer butt on the hood, where one failed to exit the asphalt in a timely manner on a dark & foggy night.

I myself have lost count of the number of mobile speedbumps (aka armadillos) that have met their fate on the front of my vehicles. They tend to root around in the grass next to the roadway, and suddenly get an urge to cross the street. This rarely bodes well for their next-of-kin. I've learned that armadillos tend to jump straight up in the air when they get frightened, so if collision is imminent, you can wait until just before impact, hit your horn, and they'll pop up and hit your bumper instead of getting tangled up in the undercarriage.

I've also hit my fair share of rabbits & squirrels. In my youth, I'd make a point of veering towards them, figuring I was helping to clear out the gene pool of the foolish ones that liked to dash across roads. Mistaking a skunk for a very dingy rabbit one late night stopped that practice. (Jim Beam was helping me drive...)

Cats, dogs & waterfowl I've always stopped for. More than once I've left several dollars worth of tire smeared on the pavement rather than squish a schnauzer or steamroll a Siamese. I figure it's just good karma against the times my pets get loose and go wandering. As for the waterfowl, well, I've always been partial to ducks. The waddling & quacking just appeals to me for some reason.

This affinity for the billed & webfooted is why I was so bummed this morning to see two duck-shaped road pizzas on Long Point road. There's a small colony of ducks living along the creek between Hollister & Bingle, just east of Spring Branch Hospital. For some reason, the duck colony (which is getting smaller & smaller) isn't content staying on the north side of the road. They'll feel the urge to go eat grass and dibble in the water on the south side, and usually they lose a duck in the journey across five lanes of tarmac.

To get two dead ducks at once seems a deliberate action on some pisshead's part. It's not like they're not visible, and you can see them waddling towards the road in time to slow down. No, someone just ran 'em down, and no doubt I'll see the remainder of the duck herd sitting shiva for the departed this coming week.

So, just a reminder, slow down a bit, keep your eyes peeled for the slow and waddly (myself included...), and we can avoid those awful duck-pizzas in the road!