January 3, 2012

Roadside memorials...

... for animals.
"There have been numerous incidences of road traffic accidents involving animal fatalities and these innocent victims deserve to be remembered"...

53 comments:

ambisinistral said...

I thought that what deer crossing signs were for.

Titus said...

I agree.

I fucking love animals so much.

I saw the movie War Horse and had to leave because of all the dead horses. It was too much.

Animals are amazing.

tits.

Chip S. said...

Maybe one sign every 10 km or so, a la McDonald's: Over X thousand roadkills on this stretch of highway.

Come to think of it, McDonald's already is commemorating dead animals in this sort of way.

Chip S. said...

Here lies Bambi;
his buddy Thumper, too.
Done in by a Mini;
Oh, what a little bumper can do!

Burma Shave

Steve Burri said...

I couldn't make it to the next rest stop so I left a roadside memorial to our Christmas goose.

Brian O'Connell said...

I like how PETA is blaming this on dangerous drivers. You don't need to be a dangerous driver to run over an animal. The stupider ones tend to throw themselves into oncoming traffic.

But I think this is a good idea. There's so much road kill around here that PETA will be kept quite busy on memorials. If they include raccoons and possums and such. Chipmunks too.

Palladian said...

I think people need to start putting up memorials to bacteria. Wherever an innocent bacterium is killed, we need crosses and soggy, sullen teddy bears and spent votive candles with peeling stickers bearing the likeness of Jesus, El Rey.

Joe said...

I almost hit a deer last night on a busy main street because the bastard apparently thought "lots of lights" meant "safe to cross".

Ann Althouse said...

I'm opposed to roadside memorials, so this proposal intrigues me.

Automatic_Wing said...

How bout memorials for all the animals that are killed by other animals?

Tyrone Slothrop said...

On a Discovery Channel program about a family of homesteaders in Alaska, one of the subjects had to decide if he was going to kill his favorite dairy cow before it died of old age, wasting all that beef. It was sad-- he really loved that cow. Kinda made me wonder.

Titus said...

My parents have a cottage on lake delton Wisconsin and when I would drive home at dusk I was always swerving not to hit deer. They were fucking everywhere.

They come out at dusk.

We would see some field with over 50 deer. It was so beautiful. Some of them had huge racks and I love a big rack.

dhagood said...

i too love animals. they're delicious.

edutcher said...

Considering the PETA crowd values animals more than human life, this is just about right.

Unknown said...

Don't forget skunks! Fearless as they are, they end up being over-represented in the roadkill statistics.

Titus said...

I love watching videos of animals giving birth.

It is so natural and beautiful.

Some of them have huge amniotic sacs.

I love seeing mother dogs chew off the amniotic sac and breathing life into the rare clumbers mouth. Precious.

F said...

No. I'd write more, but your spam filter or decency filter or something would surely delete what more I have to say. Get a life, PETA!

Unknown said...

How about the deaths of 150 humans yearly caused by cars hitting a bolting deer on a highway?

Who would get the memorial?

chickelit said...

Ann Althouse said...
I'm opposed to roadside memorials, so this proposal intrigues me.

The ancient Romans put tombs alongside their roads. How long before that makes a comeback?

cassandra lite said...

Driving home last night, a bug splattered on my windshield. I was so upset by this senseless death, I beat the shit out of my mother.

Wince said...

The limitation should be that the memorial must be constructed of nothing else but the dead animal's bones.

Like Al Jourgensen's mic stand .

DADvocate said...

these innocent victims deserve to be remembered

Don't worry. I doubt I'll ever forget that dead deer splattered all over the highway by a semi.

Toshstu said...

Roadkill memorials seem a little redundant.

traditionalguy said...

PETA is just warming up. Their next step is a campaign to make Vehicular Faunicide into a Felony.

Toshstu said...

When you consider the American lives lost due to irresponsibly wandering animals, it's a bit of an insult to the actual victims of evolution's losers, we're supposed to run them over.

Cull the herd and feed America's jailed, it's win-win. Unless you hit a Moose.

Peter V. Bella said...

Roadside memorials are nothing more than litter.

Toshstu said...

Roadkill already has an anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UejelYnVI3U

Armadillos are the official roadkill of Texas, but in the past 2 weeks, I've seen three dead coyotes on highways around Ft Worth, and no-one picks them up. I go to lunch and it's dead coyote, day four. They lose weigh fast.

The most evolved and adaptive critters in Texas are the buzzards, they never get hit.

tommygun said...

It would sure slow traffic down, what with feeling obligated to stop at each one to show your proper respects.

Mary Beth said...

I don't like the memorials for people, I don't want animal ones added to them.

PETA needs to quit wasting time and just put up signs that say, "Pay attention to us!".

crosspatch said...

I have always wanted to do some roadside art. One thing I wanted to do was go someplace very cold and collect roadkill deer. Then at Christmas, I would scatter 8 deer on the side of the road with a dummy in a Santa suit and maybe a cardboard airplane wing.

Or maybe just get some coat hanger wire and make stands and set up small roadkill in interesting poses along the side of the road. Maybe have them waiving at passing cars or something.

Eh, just another thing I'll probably never really do.

Penny said...

Sometimes, just SOMETIMES, the premise of the story is so damn dumb...you have to go along to get along.

Browndog said...

I kinda like Wolverines-

You're welcome Wisconsin....for saving the Big-(whatever)10 from embarrassment.

GO BLUE!

David said...

Do you realize how many chickens died at Hiroshima.

It's time they were remembered too.

JAL said...

@ crosspatch at Christmas, I would scatter 8 deer on the side of the road with a dummy in a Santa suit and maybe a cardboard airplane wing.

Something like this?

bagoh20 said...

I get it. This is supposed to be a metaphor for what's happening in Iowa?

bagoh20 said...

Even Rare Clumbers will eat your liver if you die in the house alone with them.

Tits

coketown said...

I read this story earlier before making dinner. It was comical narrating my dinner routine as if I were a PETA investigative reporter. "Coketown was arrested earlier today for the murder of 1.5 pounds of shrimp, a cow, and three chickens. Their remains were found in his kitchen, some ground up in the freezer, some marinating in the fridge. Neighbors become concerned after seeing him discard the aborted remains of chicken embryos in the dumpster."

Anyway. Anthropomorphizing animals. Let that phrase sink in for a moment. I think it started with George Bernard Shaw and his quote on how he was a vegetarian because his ethical code prohibits him from devouring corpses. He was, incidentally, a fervent advocate of eugenics. Which make sense. When you categorize humans as just another kind of animal it's incredibly easy to sanctify animals and start culling people.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Animals aren't children.

chuck b. said...

But children are animals!

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

They get better. Sometimes.

David R. Graham said...

Agreed, roadside memorials are kitch. However, compassion, internal grief for loss of life and sorrow for any creature's suffering or being overtaken by events beyond their control or frame of reference, is human essence. Comments here exhibit callousness rather than compassion. That is, non-human impulses.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

No, you dilute human compassion by elevating animals to the same level.

Animals deserve the respect due to them. Humans deserve more.

Deb said...

Armadillos are the official roadkill of Texas,

In Georgia, it's opossums. or 'possums. Armadillos are 'possum on the half shell.

In fact, the ONLY way to kill a possum is to run over it.

wv: hagficst. i won't go there.

Toad Trend said...

"...would provide a valuable reminder to motorists that it is not only humans that suffer at the hands of dangerous drivers"."

Ahh, another meme courtesy of a left-wing group. The assumption being that animal fatalities MUST be the result of 'dangerous' driving. The mind of the leftist = the mind of a child.

Deer crossing signs are erected to warn humans about thoughtless, impulsive large wild animals.

I know nobody that thinks an animal death, regardless of species or cause, is actually good, unless its to feed people or other animals. Can we make this clear?

Just like the dirty water/dirty air meme the left routinely ties around the necks of non-leftists, this one is complete and utter nonsense.

People
Eating
Tasty
Animals

Paco Wové said...

"I know nobody that thinks an animal death, regardless of species or cause, is actually good, unless its to feed people or other animals. Can we make this clear?"

Sorry, have to disagree. I can think of lots of animals whose deaths are (or would be) positively celebrated:

screwworm flies
anopheles mosquitoes
cockroaches
various rodent species
the fucking bunnies that ate our hostas last year
etc.

Toad Trend said...

Hey Paco

OK with some *obvious* exceptions.

Now go back to picking nits already.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Deb said...
Armadillos are the official roadkill of Texas,

In Georgia, it's opossums. or 'possums. Armadillos are 'possum on the half shell.

In fact, the ONLY way to kill a possum is to run over it.


That's a lie! I grew up in North Carolina and I know for a fact that all possums are born dead in the road!

JAL said...

In fact, the ONLY way to kill a possum is to run over it.

The really weird thing is that it is hard NOT to run over them.

They weave left, weave right, and in slow motion right under your wheel in a sci-fi version of inevitability.

wv hyptfug
Something to do with this conversation

JAL said...

Don't tread to Paco Now go back to picking nits already.

Don't you mean gnats?

Or noseeums?

JAL said...

@ David

Lighten up.

I haven't detected too many of the folks here as having that desire to aim their vehicles at critters in the road.

Probably not too many have "I brake for animals" bumper stickers, though.

It's a mindset.

Alan said...

"incidences"????

Toad Trend said...

JAL

No, nits...as in 'nitpicking'...nits are the eggs of lice.

Craig Howard said...

Numerous incidences?

The death of English is eminent.