"Why are people surprised that there are animals on the roads? Perhaps this whole car/road system should be replaced. Cars are horrible killing machines of people and their fellow creatures, and a main reason for the massive environmental destruction in our country."
A comment on "Mom, 2 children die after striking alligator on South Carolina interstate, authorities say" (WaPo).
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They should post signs so the animals will only cross the road in designated areas, like they do with deer.
Jets kill animals. Beloved trains do as well. How many critters did Amazon-laden trucks kill to-day, LBJ?
Maybe it’s time to stay home, stop traveling, and let just Bezos-owned services deliver the goods and news.
Before cars, the crisis was what would cities do with all the horse shit?
Now we have a new problem.
It's time to admit the wheel was a huge mistake.
"Millions and millions of animals are killed each year"
Exaggeration much?
Replace the car-road system with what? Horses and carriages?
This reminds me of the NPR listener comment that the "Miracle on the Hudson" landing by Sully could have been avoided if only those pesky jets would stop interfering with the geese.
Message to loons. Animals are on a lower level than humans. Animals don't have a soul and were not made in the image and likeness of God. Recall Genesis and the Garden of Eden. The animals were created to serve man and woman.
Alligator Alley from Miami to Naples is a straight road going through a swamp. But I-95 in the Carolinas goes past lots of swamps too. The government needs to declare Homo Sapiens to be an endangered species and then we can exterminate the Gators. UGA fans are in total agreement.
Ignored? Hardly!
In fact, it has been commemorated in song.
A song that goes something, but not exactly, like this:
https://youtu.be/xadfgzYplhY
It’s time to admit the wheel was a huge mistake.
Imagine if we had applied the “Precautionary Principle” to fire.
I've always wondered if there's any sort of selection in high-traffic areas for the perceptual skill necessary to avoid becoming road-kill. Say, are urban squirrels and rabbits any better at not getting squashed by cars than their rural back-roads cousins would be? Doesn't seem to be, judging from the corpses littering the city streets.
Maybe that's a good thing. Otherwise the little buggers would be completely out of control. God knows there are too many deer in the nabe, denuding the flora. And no hunting allowed within city limits.
Besides, what would the crows eat? Everybody dies. Everything dies.
It used to be that dead dogs were all over. Dogs were better socialized owing to roaming the neighborhood to play with the kids, so they got hit by cars too.
Vicki Hearne
It used to bother me to see dead dogs and cats lying in the road. Still does, but recently I visited a small town in South Carolina. The area was fairly flat, and there were many small farms, the houses set back a few hundred yards from the road, and dogs would get onto the road and sometimes get run over. Something about this cheered me up, but I couldn't put my finger on it for a while until I returned to Connecticut, where I have not seen a dead dog on the road since I can remember, even though I live in what New Yorkers call "the country." Dead squirrels, possums, raccoons, but no dead dogs.
Then I worked it out. The presence of dead raccoons and such in Connecticut means - ah! It means that there are living raccoons around here and therefore that raccoons haven't been so thoroughly rescued as dogs have been. Indeed, it means that the wild animals in my little neck of the woods are in some ways more integrated into the polis than the (ultimately domestic) dog. If there were dead dogs on the road in South Carolina, that meant that there were still dogs running around, which meant that the local humane society hadn't yet rounded them all up and killed them.
_Bandit_ p.280
"Perhaps this whole car/road system should be replaced. "
if it will save even one (animal) life, it will be well worth it;
What good has Ever come from cars or roads?
Once we (finally!) get rid of:
cars
roads
industry
jobs
mankind
then the animals can live in peace! That IS our goal, right?
The AAA has BLOOD on their hands!
The AAA wants children to DIE!
The AAA owns your congress critter!
I understand that, in Texas,there is a "Road Kill Cafe".
What's the biggest animal you ever hit?
I got into a head-on with a horse once. Wow!
Take it from me, if you ever hit a horse, you'll never go back to deer.
As I identify as a crocodilian, this is an uncomfortable subject.
@TraditionalGuy - I drive Alligator Alley all the time (living in The SWF as i do) and all 90+ miles of it have real fencing on it to keep the alligators off.
What's really dangerous are the drivers. I read in the paper (so it must be true) that the average speeding ticket on the AA was 92mph. I've gone by cops at 82 in a 70 zone and they don't even blink at me, so I'm not surprised. But sorta am.
-XC
"It’s time to admit the wheel was a huge mistake."
One explanation of why Arabs did not use the wheel was that the camel was much better as a means of transport across sandy desert.
There are other explanation, as well.
Deer kill and injury hundreds of Americans every year. Some Creighton students died in a car crash in Gage County. You need to drive straight and not veer to the side. They didn't know that.
@ Michael K
Can a camel be trained to pull a cart? I've never seen one hooked up to anything.
Women's rights and wheels, two tricks of Shaitan the Arabs didn't fall for.
Cars are horrible killing machines of people and their fellow creatures
Alas, we have no Second Amendment to protect our rights to own and use automobiles.
Starchild was inconsolable, sobbing into my chest. It was the bugs on her bumper, she managed between breaths, each tiny, brown life lost forever.
I’d found her that afternoon, frozen at the kitchen window, staring-off into the fields of an insufficiently-regulated township.
‘What are we doing to her’,she looked up at me, tears streaming down her face? What is all this for?.
That weekend we would come to re-submit receivership of 239-A.
Peace Pavilion West was an organic horse farm, work-camp, and a place for community. Dale Matiasson was its charismatic leader.
Upon Googling I see pictures of camels hooked up to carts, but it looks strange and unnatural, kind of like seeing a woman in a voting booth.
Just as I hit the speed limit change at the edge of town, there were a couple geese and some pretty young ones. First that I had seen this year. And, of course, the young ones aren't road wise yet. Or maybe they are still too well camouflaged, so don't show up as well as the parents against the black asphalt. Indeed, that is how you detect the young ones - you see the parents on the highway, ask yourself why they are walking when they fly just fine, think about their babies, go "whoops", look for them, and hit the brakes. Luckily, this time, with plenty of time to spare. What is a bit confusing is that we have plenty of birds there that se m to love playing chicken, with cars. They wait until the last s cond in the middle of the road, then take off. You mostly don't brake for them, knowing that they will get away in time. Not the geese- the mature ones don't play chicken, and pretty much only hang out on the highway when they are shepherding their young. Oh, and had to stop for the local turkey flock late last week just after I hot on the highway. No young yet though.
Biggest menace around there are, of course, pre-venisons (aka deer). Making things worse - hunting is most often forbidden within city limits, so guess what? Yeh - that is where they congregate. We are in the city limits, but where the speed limit on the highway goes to 45 from 25. Downtown gets ridiculous as hunting season approaches, and the young are fully mobile - not uncommon to see herds of better than a dozen meandering across a major highway. Like what the guy across the street did - big brush guard on the front of his pickup, and deer whistles on it. Just too expensive for mine (and my partner would notice that I spent the money). In 4 years, he hasn't gotten a deer yet, but did back into one of our trees in a snowstorm last year and did damage to the rear end.
The one really interesting wildlife we have to dodge on the highway are the bighorn sheep. For a 10 mile stretch starting 5 miles east of town, they come down to the river to drink, and, unfortunately don't all go back up the mountains. Sign saying that 438 (or so) have been killed along there, so look out. And, because of that, a couple of years ago, the speed limit was reduced cede from 70 to 55. Except that a lot of people ignore the lowered speed limits, and they keep dying (the death toll was in the high 300s when the speed limit was cut). And, yes, they act almost as stupidly as the pre-venisons, esp the young males, practicing head butting right there on the shoulder (where they sometimes get butted into traffic). Probably would be worse, except that the tourists driving through there tend to stop and take pictures of the sheep, not having dodged them for years, like the people who live there have. And cars stopped along that stretch of highway pretty much means big horn sheep, so slow down.
Spain was not a "wheeled" country either, most of it, until very late in the 19th century. The problems of building railroads and highways between mountain-isolated population centers were extreme. It was akin to pushing the Central Pacific over the Sierra Nevada. But over and over and over again.
The traditional way of getting around overland was the mule, the Iberian answer to the camel.
Spanish mules were therefore the finest in Europe.
The reason is geography. Iberia is rugged in such a way that most of northern Europe isn't, moreover there is a lack of navigable waterways.
Muleteers were popular, proletarian romantic figures.
They brought things and stories and news, fought their way past bandits and natural perils. And they knew their status very well, and dressed the part, as flashy as they could manage.
"Millions and millions of animals are killed each year"
If this is true, we need to keep killing them, or else we will quickly be swamped with millions of extra animals.
but it looks strange and unnatural, kind of like seeing a woman in a voting booth.
I literally lol'd.
Blogger David Begley said...
Deer kill and injury hundreds of Americans every year.
The last time I was in Alaska, we were driving down the Kenai Peninsula and saw a sign with the number of moose killed on that highway that year (It was late summer.) The number was about 250!
Hitting a moose will get your attention.
Down here in TN we are in the height of the run-over armadillo season. I am amazed they are not extinct. Looks like about one per mile on the country roads. I MAY have seen a live one once.
The reason is geography. Iberia is rugged in such a way that most of northern Europe isn't,
That's why Spain has not been invaded since Napoleon was foolish enough to try.
I think Loudon Wainwright III said it best:
Crossing the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are
You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinking to high heaven
Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose
Roll up your window and hold your nose
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
And it's stinking to high heaven
Yeah, you got your dead cat and you got your dead dog
On a moonlight night, you got your dead toad frog
Got your dead rabbit and your dead raccoon
The blood and the guts, they're gonna make you swoon
You got your dead skunk in the middle
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinking to high heaven
C'mon, stink
" They wait until the last s cond in the middle of the road, then take off."
Like the baby quail on our street. There is one spot, part of a gulley that has to be avoided in monsoon season, where they seem to always wait at the side of the road until they see me coming and then run out.
Lots of quail. They young seem to be doing better as we have a quail block in the back yard that lasts about 5 days. Some days there will be 12 or so at one time.
You CANNOT imagine how many love bugs are killed by Yankees traveling into Florida. Millions is not an exaggeration if one includes insects, which are animals.
Alligators are surprisingly spry when you're bearing down on them. Driving in a golf cart I once startled a three footer who proceeded to demonstrate he had a three foot vertical leap and nearly ended up in the lap of my passenger.
We should have flying cars so all we kill with them are birds and bugs!
"Mom, 2 children die after striking alligator on South Carolina interstate, authorities say"
What is the point of "authorities say" in this headline?
Do we need authorities to make them officially dead? Or tie their deaths to the car crash which came from striking an alligator?
Isn't the headline just as informative and accurate without "authorities say"?
Or has the WAPO lost so much credibility that no WAPO headline can be believed that isn't backed up by independent experts or unnamed sources?
rehajm said...
"Alligators are surprisingly spry when you're bearing down on them."
Run serpentine! Serpentine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9MU2oXzSL4
I can't believe Althouse let that slide.
Imagine her reaction if the headline had been worded:
Mom, 2 children die after striking alligator on South Carolina interstate, authorities garner
Do some people imagine that animals live forever if not for human interference?
Exaggeration much?
She was including the bugs smashed on windshields, obviously. I write she because it's 99% certain the WaPo commenter was female and a lunatic.
Being run down is one of the least tortuous ways to die in the wild. I suggest we use it for capital punishment. It's certainly less horrible than the lethal injection which in my opinion is one of the stupidest backward steps in mankind's progress. A bullet to the head is the least offensive and cruel methods we have ever used. Everything else we come up with is worse. Why do we keep trying? It's perfect: cheap, quick, reliable, painless, and mostly devoid of cruelty or drama. Wait, what were we talking? Oh yea, squirrels, dead squirrels.
Alligators die in darkness.
I am guessing the mother swerved to avoid hitting the gator and lost control.
I almost killed myself as a teenager swerving to miss a dog in the middle of a two-lane mountain road. I made the decision then and there to never swerve again unless I was under 25 mph- either stop going straight, or clean the blood and fur off the car otherwise.
So you're saying that liberty, freedom, and personal autonomy all have costs and dangers? That the freedom to own and drive one's automobile carries with it responsibility and the chance of injury/harm? That despite that risk hundreds of millions of Americans prefer freedom to the alleged safety of not having it (of not being allowed to own a car, having to ride a state-owned bus everywhere, etc)?
Golly I hope that line of thinking doesn't apply equally well to any other areas of political dispute today!
Michael K said...
Before cars, the crisis was what would cities do with all the horse shit?
Now we have a new problem.
Do we? Most of the problems I see lately sure seem to involve horseshit, bullshit...
"Hitting a moose will get your attention."
Hitting a moose will also get you killed. They have such long legs that their torso is just about level with the windscreen of a pick up truck. 800 ponds of moose at 45 miles an hour is pretty spectacular. It used to be the leading cause of highway deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador.
or pounds. You know. Whatever.
"Millions and millions" of road kill each year in USA sounds plausible. Consider that 1 billion birds are killed each year by flying into windows! Sounded like an outrageous exaggeration when I first heard of it: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/windows-may-kill-988-million-birds-year-united-states . Given that, "millions and millions" of dead animals (deer, dogs, squirrels, raccoons, moose, horse, cows, turtles, honey badgers, etc.) sounds reasonable.
Not enough of them are cats though. Damn things are too smart. Though I did hit one years and years ago on I-5 in Los Angeles. Nasty job cleaning it out of the grill.
Talking Heads, "Animals":
...
They say they don't need money
They're living on nuts and berries
They say animals don't worry
You know animals are hairy?
They think they know what's best
They're making a fool of us
They ought to be more careful
They're setting a bad example
They have untroubled lives
They think everything's nice
They like to laugh at people
They're setting a bad example
(go ahead) laugh at me.
"A bullet to the head is the least offensive and cruel methods we have ever used."
I have this idea for an exploding hat.
"Talking Heads, "Animals":"
don't forget; Air can hurt you too!
And from the Doors:
There's a killer on the road.
His brain is squirming like a toad.
"Hitting a moose will get your attention."
Hitting a moose will also get you killed.
Yes, but for that instant before death, it has your attention.
I was almost bagged by a pheasant in South Dakota once. I was driving about 100 mph around dawn on my way from Chicago to Seattle. The pheasant took off and I thought he would clear the car but he got sucked down and hit the windshield right in front of me, but high enough that he went over the car and not through the windshield into my face.
If he had not, you wouldn't have Michael K to kick around.
My brother is convinced possum are born flat in the middle of the road. It's hard to argue against that.
As my dad said after the squirrel darted underneath his wheels, "He won't have the guts to do that again!"
"Hitting a moose will get your attention."
Riding my motorcycle with friends in Maine. A grizzled old biker came up to us at a gas station and warned us about moose. He said their eyes don't reflect light like a deer's eye. So if you are riding in the dark and don't see anything, it's a moose.... Not as helpful a hint as I'd hoped.
My driver's Ed teacher MANY years ago was asked, "What do I do if a dog runs out in front of me?"
"How big is the dog?" was the reply.
As it turns out, Wikipedia has a highly informative page on Roadkill:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadkill
Michael K reports: I was almost bagged by a pheasant in South Dakota once. I was driving about 100 mph around dawn on my way from Chicago to Seattle. The pheasant took off and I thought he would clear the car but he got sucked down and hit the windshield right in front of me, but high enough that he went over the car and not through the windshield into my face.
We had a pheasant fly through a triple-pane window in our home, right through a bedroom and into the hallway and the poor thing was still quivering. Fortunately, we were home at the time, not gone for the winter.
Pheasant fact: As common as they are, the Chinese Ring-necked pheasants are NOT native to America but were introduced only a few decades ago.
http://www.historylink.org/File/8444
So if you are riding in the dark and don't see anything, it's a moose.... Not as helpful a hint as I'd hoped.
A flying magazine offered the helpful hint for spotting other airplanes from the air - look at a fixed point on the ground and look for movement in side-vision. It works really well, in fact. You pick up lots of airplanes you wouldn't have noticed (when they're against the ground and not the sky they're hard to see).
Unfortunately, as boaters say, constant bearing means collision. So you can see all the airplanes except those on a collision course with you.
We had a pheasant fly through a triple-pane window in our home,
I ran into two pheasants on my way to work one time. They flew up in front of my car out of the brush alongside the road and hit the front passenger fender. I was only going about 35 at the time. I felt bad about it.
So...I stopped. One was dead. I wrung the neck of the other one and took them to the lumber milling company where I was working as a bookkeeper. Borrowed a knife. Cleaned them. Put them in the fridge at work. Took them home and we had pheasant dinner later that week.
No one at the mill thought too much of it. At least it wasn't a deer. Waste not want not.
So...I stopped. One was dead. I wrung the neck of the other one and took them to the lumber milling company where I was working as a bookkeeper. Borrowed a knife. Cleaned them. Put them in the fridge at work. Took them home and we had pheasant dinner later that week.
No one at the mill thought too much of it. At least it wasn't a deer. Waste not want not.
I wonder what the reaction of one's colleagues in the 46th floor midtown office of a foreign hedge fund would be, to one's plucking and gutting a brace of birds in the pantry sink.
Disposal of the offal-does anything go in the recycling bins? Which one? Is that knife HR-compliant? Will the gorgeous kittenish Persian-French VIE girl faint if she sees it, or will she angle for a dinner invitation? Will my shooting enthusiast friend in Research ask what I took them with, and what will his face look like when I tell him, 03 Suburban?
Took them home and we had pheasant dinner later that week.
I had a similar experience. Two mallards — duck and drake — took flight from beside the road just as I passed by in my truck. They flew diagonally across the road but at only inches in height. I stuck the drake with my front bumper though I was trying to stop. I ran back to find the drake apparently unhurt but unwilling or unable to fly. I decided the bird might be merely stunned. I have worked on raptor rehabilitation projects, and am familiar with this kind of incident involving hawks. Sometimes it takes only a few hours for the bird to entirely recover, otherwise, there may be hidden injuries which require measures more complicated than simple protection, shelter, water, food, etc.
I took the mallard home and made it comfortable in a cardboard box cushioned with towels, and watched it through the night, but by the following dawn, it was dead. I plucked and cleaned the carcass, discovering in the process a broken spine. I roasted him according to a favorite recipe using bacon strips for larding, but the flesh was not just gamey, it was repellent. I could not say what those birds had been eating, but the taste reminded me of the odor of pond algae. I gave the whole bird to my Wolfhound.
I hope DBQ's pheasant was more enjoyable. If I were in her situation, with two-freshly killed pheasants, I think I would have not cleaned the birds immediately. I would have put them in the fridge and then properly hanged them at home for several days. It does improve the eating remarkably, disgusting though it sounds. Honest Food has some valuable commentary.
Man, my last comment was horrible — I this, and I that. Rewriting is imperative but not forthcoming given the trivial subject. I just wanted the folks to know I know a hawk from a handsaw whichever way the wind blows.
A hawk is not a bird in that figure of speech. You probably know that already.
No one at the mill thought too much of it. At least it wasn't a deer. Waste not want not.
In Alaska, there are signs along the highways, "Game Management Area 3" and I wondered the first time what that meant. What it means is that if you are a resident living off the grid in that district, you can get on the "Roadkill List."
If someone hits a moose or caribou, the top name on the list is called and has 30 minutes to come get the carcass. No answer, the next name is called until somebody comes and gets it.
Some of those families can live a year on a moose meat carcass. They all have freezers if they have electricty.
the "Roadkill List."
They need a phone app. Call it "Wheels On Meals."
Bison, moose, deer,
Cows, horses, sheep:
All best to drive around
if you're in a Jeep.
Deer have been sharing the roads with cars for going on a century and a half. If it took them this long to figure out wolves we'd never have seen one.
There's a bend in one of the major roads in Atlanta that I once walked past, and it sickened me how many squirrel corpses were piled there in various stages of decomposition and squish. Probably many of them would not have been there if so many Atlantans didn't insist on driving as if they were at the Indy 500. A few years ago there was a campaign, "Atlanta--drive civilized!" The signs are long gone, probably because the local boosters thought it reflected badly on Atlanta. Those squirrels died for our sins.
Squirrels are rodents, WC.
Not long ago we were insane enough to make alligators a protected sprcies. This gator killed three, and a week or so ago another one killed and partially ate a woman who was walking her dogs. Wherever there are large healthy gators it’s the humans who need protection.
Not long ago we were insane enough to make alligators a protected species. Now they’re thriving and they’re killing people. This gator killed three; about a week ago another one killed and partially ate a woman who was out walking her dogs. Two years ago one killed a two year old at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Where alligators are thriving it’s women and children who need protection.
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