I hear a lot of anecdotes about things people find on the highway. I have family members who say they found a free couch on the highway. A friend of a friend said they found a board game set on the highway. Then today a family member was talking about a cat they adopted, and I asked how she ended up with one (she doesn’t like cats), and she said “oh we found her on the highway, we’re surprised nothing happened to her”.
Is this a common thing? What’s the most unexpected thing you found while on the highway?
I thought you were going to describe an animal.
Because it reminded me of road kill I saw on the highway near Medicine Hat, Alberta. We were on a cross country road trip in about 2001 and late in the evening we stopped to look at the beautiful landscape of the prairies. Nearby I saw a big black bump with what looked like sticks around it. There were signs of fur or hair. I stood there staring at it for several minutes trying to figure out what it might be … a box of meat, some chemical bag, a thing of garbage, at old carpet roll or just a lump of soil.
It took far too long for me to realize it was a deer … or what was left of a deer. It probably had been hit days or weeks ago, then run over, again and again and again until it got flattened except for the small part in the shoulder where a hoof or an antler was sticking out like twigs.
I didn’t think road kill the size of a deer at first because I’m from northern Ontario and when someone kills a large animal there, it’s cleared right away and often some old trapper or hunter is willing to pick it up and use it for food, dog scraps, fur, hide or animal bone.
And you’d think it was disgusting to see one of these. All through Alberta and for a small portion of Saskatchewan, dozens of entire deer carcasses are left on the road to rot and be run over without anyone ever clearing them.