I don't know what it is-- but I see a lot of roadkill.
Eviscerated rodentia.
Flattened squirrels.
Twitching chipmunks.
Smashed up canines, and other carcasses, torn up beyond recognition. A ribcage here. Some red, stringy detritus there. Bowels and bones and brains, strewn all over the otherwise unmarred motoring surface.
Deer, fucking split open like a cranium at an autopsy.
Today, it was a goddamn cat, turned upside-down, its rigor-mortised legs standing straight up in the air like it was standing in an upsidedown photograph.
And let me tell you something, this cat definitely cannot, in any way, shape, or form, haz cheeseburger.
My wife doesn't like to drive. I don't particularly know why, but I don't really care, because I love to drive. So, when she and I are in a car together, 99.17% of the time, she's in the passenger seat, and I'm turning the wheel. And speeding. Yes, even in the nine-year-old PT Cruiser, I manage to speed, flogging the underpowered, technologically-retarded four-cylinder engine as necessary. And, as I meander at a somewhat fleet pace through the streets of our little burbia, it seems like every time we're in the car together I'll wince and go,
"Aaauugh! Did you see that fucking otter by the curb? It looks like Shrek sat on it!"
or
"Jesus Christ! Look at that fucking deer-- decapitated like an Al Qaeida hostage!"
or
"Oh my God, I'm gonna fucking vom if I see one more steamrolled squirrel with brains leaking out of its ears."
And she'll say,
"What squirrel?"
Maybe I'm driving too fast for her to catch all of the roadside action, or, I suppose "inaction" would be a better word. Maybe she's just not as observant as I am. Maybe, because I'm driving, my eyes are supposed to be constantly scanning the road, my scattered brain obsessively taking in and processing relevant information so that I can make lightning-quick decisions about how to turn the wheel or when to slam on the brakes. Maybe she has inhereted her father's knack for glazing over the terrority ahead in favor of a gaggle of higher thoughts, not understood by or observable to the rest of us mental plebians.
I don't know. She's my wife, and she's pretty cool. Who knows what's going on in that beautiful brain of hers?
What I do know is: she doesn't see 3/4ths of the roadkill that I see, and it's made me start to question myself.
Am I imagining it?
No.
But-- could it be?
Come on-- the fucking cat-- it was... its legs were.... I swear.
Truly. I do.
You believe me..... don't you?
And, trust me, it's not like I'm avidly searching for it. I think by now you know that I'm not the kind of guy who would scoop up a three-week-old marmoset with the letters "GOODYEAR" plomped onto its belly and take it home and fry it up with a side of chipmunk ball cous-cous. But I see carrion all the time and my wife, my only other consistent car companion just doesn't.
Kind of makes you suspicious of me, I guess. And I can't say I necessarily blame you. I want to think you believe I'm sane but, if you've been with me for a while or have sifted through the archive of this blog there's copious evidence that I'm probably not.
I just wish I really were crazy so my brain could turn the roadkill that my eyes seem so fixated on into other things like, oh, I don't know-- Vietnamese lingerie models, or funny little toadstools with happy smiley faces.... or cupcakes. Maybe easy-to-solve math problems. Or even a non-vivisected otter.
That would be just ducky!
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Snow Day cover reveal
4 months ago
Oh my god- I am laughing so hard because I see the roadkill. My hubs doesn't and it drives me crazy. Or when he does it's no big deal. He's what I call "country" and I am absolute city girl. He told me once he hit a deer with his truck, put it in the back, and had venison made from it. DISGUSTING. So if we pass something, and he sees it, he's all like, "That's such a shame. That could have been used". OMG. Gross. So now that explains why I won't eat anything that my in-laws made. Plus- his dad works for the DNR so they are always storing dead animals on their property. Including in the house.
ReplyDeleteDude, I remember the day I suddenly stopped unseeing roadkill. I remarked casually to my friend that I'd never seen a dead animal in my life. Three seconds later, she pointed out an oozy former squirrel. Now I'm cursed with The Sight, and can't drive more than a quarter of a mile without the freeway getting all pet sematary on me. Your wife is lucky!
ReplyDeleteWarning: Another Catholic School memory follows:
ReplyDeleteGrowing up we were taught that whenever we heard a siren, we should bless ourselves to pray for whomever was losing their home to a ferocious blaze, being rushed to the emergency room, or being handcuffed by the police. I continued this practice in college, to the puzzlement of one of my hallmates. When I explained to her what I was doing, she said, "Oh, I get it. I bless myself whenever I see roadkill."
She later became a veterinarian.
Colleen--
ReplyDeleteIn college, I dated a Catholic girl for 18 thoroughly confusing months. She crossed herself whenever we would see an ambulance.
Years later, I was wearing a blue uniform and a badge, sitting in the back of an ambulance, with a psychotic, drug-abusing maniac in four-point restraints staring at me with pure mania in his eyes. We were stuck in heavy traffic on I-76 and I was scheduled to teach a theatre class at 5:30. We were transporting this shithead to a psychiatric hospital for rehab-- nothing urgent.
Knowing I would be late for my class, my partner flipped on the red lights & siren, and not only did people move over, but a Pennsylvania State Trooper turned his lights on, got in front of us, and gave us an escort for seven miles.
And all I could think about, besides getting arrested, was my ex-girlfriend, crossing away.
Just be glad you don't live in the South (or do you?). Folks down here eat roadkill. I'm not joking. I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day. Believe me, you don't want me to go into specifics, but I heard the banjos playing in the background.
ReplyDeleteNow, I sleep with my lights on and my baseball bat under my pillows.
Maybe it's easy for her to blissfully unaware of the mangled cat in the street. Very funny.
ReplyDeleteMy abs thank you for making it damn near impossible to eat my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit from Micky D's.
ReplyDeleteAnd you might have a split personality that lives in an alternate reality, which would explain why you're seeing the road kill and she is not...(Probably not, but I did just watch Fight Club.)
I posted about this! :) http://strandupdate.blogspot.com/2010/01/roadkill-its-whats-for-dinner.html
ReplyDeleteI never noticed the plethora of roadkill until after I read this. Now I notice every limbless squirrel and chunk of bloody fur on the road. Poor aminals.
ReplyDelete