For the Ones Who Didn't Make It

There's many things I miss about bike touring. One thing I don't miss is the roadkill.

As any long-distance cyclist could tell you, there is a lot of death at the side of the road. No critter seems exempt: I've seen everything from dogs and cats to raccoons, skunks, squirrels, possums, deer, antelope, coyotes, foxes, elk and a beaver.

One time, halfway through Kansas, I saw a donkey who had appeared to have exploded in a linear fashion. Parts were scattered along the highway for nearly 20 feet. As I carefully steered Miya through the reeking land mine, I speculated on what could have caused such a gory scene. Coming up with no satisfactory explanation, I brought it up to the cycling couple from New Jersey that I met later that day. They were clearly disgusted, but more with me than with the scene I described. "Ew! Why would you tell us about that?" The woman asked, making a face.
"Well, you're going to go right by it..." I reasoned. But in reality, I honestly thought they'd be interested. After all, the squished snakes and grasshoppers had started to get boring. At that point in my trip, surrounded by hundreds of miles of flat prairie, an interesting roadkill specimen was my idea of entertainment.

At first, I found it horrendous. My eyes watered at the sight of a fawn in a drainage ditch in Oregon. But then, after seeing roadkill countless times a day, I became accustomed to it. The smell stopped bothering me. I actually started thinking of some animals as carcasses instead of living beings. For over a month I thought that armadillos had a pink tint to their gray bodies: I had only seen them crushed at the side of the road, stained by their own blood, and had no live ones to compare them to.

It got to the point where, when I saw a deer crossing a quiet country road in front of me, I couldn't help but think of it as already doomed. The image of it dead and bloated on the roadside would come too easily to my mind. I had been conditioned to think of animals as roadkill, in much the same way as urban kids might be conditioned to think of animals as creatures in cages at the zoo.

People, I've noticed, don't like to talk about roadkill. They don't even like to think about it. Part of it is the grotesque image, but part of it must be guilt, too. Because without people, there would be no roadkill at all. We euphamistically call it "roadkill", as if the road itself is to blame.

I think its time to talk about roadkill. Having seen and smelled my fair share of it, I think we can do things a bit differently, and avoid at least some of the million animal deaths that occur every year at the side of the road. I'm becoming increasingly interested in transportation infrastructure, especially the design of "complete streets" that work for multiple modes of transport, instead of just cars. I'd like to add another component to the "complete streets" idea: that we should have roadways that are more safe for the other members of our biotic community, not just humans.