Which local bird are you?
April 30, 2025
The Rough(Stock) Life
May 1, 2025Thoughts about a very special, average moment.
When an animal dies after being struck by a vehicle, the story of their existence does not end. Nor does our role in that story.
Although one could write an entire article about the intersections of human and animal activities up until the point that a car collision occurs, I’m more interested right now in what happens afterwards. Because there is still something worth seeing, something that matters.
All of us living in this part of Wyoming have driven past roadkill. I guarantee it. The first thing that flashes through my mind, and I hope most everyone else’s too, is something akin to a mental moment of silence for a life cut short. Sure, it was not a friend or a pet of mine, but it was out there living its life just as I was living mine. We were breathing the same air, feeling the same cold, squinting into the same sunlight. That is a link we share with every living thing around us.
The next thing that happens to me is, I start looking for the others. The scavengers. The animals who perform the vital ecosystem role of cleaning up carrion will always come for the roadkill, and when they do, three things happen. First, the death of one animal is transformed into sustenance for another (the literal flow of energy through a food chain). Think about that for a moment. It’s amazing. Second, I get to see – from the lazy comfort of my car – animals and behavior that I would rarely see otherwise. Magpies, crows, eagles, coyotes, and many others, just feet away from my vehicle as I pass by. Scuffles and negotiations over access to the carcass, laying bare myriad social inter- and intra-species dynamics. What a privilege to witness, right?
That is the explanation for why Jenae and I ended up standing in the sharp and offensively cold wind one February morning, photographing Magpies on a Mule Deer carcass. It was not a special carcass or a special road. The average-ness of this moment truly cannot be overstated, and yet it felt really special to witness.
At least a dozen Magpies were hopping on and off the deer, jostling for (what I assume were) the best parts of meat, tackling, pecking, and foot-fighting with each other. There were obvious alphas, and one could easily observe a social hierarchy in action (even if we couldn’t understand it). One Magpie was molting a primary wing feather, and another had a malformed right foot which did not appear to slow it down. They were loud, and animated, and I was struck by the contrast of their black-and-white vivaciousness against the brown-gray body on a brown-gray roadside.
I said three things happen. The third thing is, you realize that an animal was hit by a car in the exact place (or very near) where all these scavengers are currently gathered. There is a very real risk of additional collision deaths as a direct consequence of the first one. So, hopefully you drive a little more carefully. Hopefully you stop (if it is safe to do so) and move that carcass well off the road so that other critters might be at less risk of the same fate. Or maybe (if you get there before the scavengers do and you are so inclined) you get approval from the 511 WYO ROADS mobile app to harvest the meat yourself. The point is, in one way or another, roadkill has its own influence on us, in action and in thought. That animal is still impacting the world it lived in. Hopefully for the better.
