Saturday, May 22: road kill

I’ve been driving all day—Chicago to Minneapolis. About 400 miles—6 hours or so. Lots of speed and lots of consequences.

Nothing happened to us and we didn’t see anything happen to anyone else, but the evidence of collision was everywhere.

Some of it almost nostalgic—the ping, thwack, and splat of bugs on the windshield. A sight and sound that only comes with highway driving. The especially juicy bugs affect a kind of hillbilly fireworks—a spectacular explosion of guts followed by a car full of, wow! did you see that one?

Then, when you pull into the gas station, your windshield covered in what looks like hundreds of mini paintball bursts, the Herculean cleaning of the windshield begins. A road trip ritual—while the tank is filling and someone is inside buying more snacks— get the extra-long squeegees from the bucket of fluid that all roadside gas stations have—and start scrubbing. You can’t really get it totally clean, but you also kind of don’t want to—it’s evidence of the arduousness of your journey.

While the insects aren’t upsetting, the deer are. We must have seen 20-30 dead deer on the roadside. A few were on bridges from which there was no escape. Most were at the edge of the road close to the trees. Four had orange “X”s on them though I am not sure what that marked. Some were fresh, some were bloated, others were skin and bones. We saw a pair of deer that had died together on the median.

The deer are heartbreaking. I found myself starting a loud conversation about the weather or asking my daughter to find a particular snack in the cooler when I noticed we were approaching a carcass. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see the deer or prevent the narrative of their deaths from coming to mind. But a story I could not ignore was the remains of a turtle on the entrance ramp.

At first, it looked like someone had run over a can of food or paint—a dark pile with sharp edges and its contents splattered about. But then I realized it couldn’t be a can of beans or a quart of indecisive greige, it had to be a shelled animal. A turtle.

The countryside’s deer must have stories to tell of the highway and the speeding lights at dusk and dawn. They must collectively know of the dangers of the hard, grey ribbon that cuts them off from the greener grasses of the fabled lands. But there’s no mythology for the turtles—only borders. Turtles, I learned, do not venture more than 2 acres from where they were born. They know what every turtle knows and no turtle adds to their story.

But this one did.

Was my turtle the only turtle who didn’t make it or the only turtle who ever tried? With no lake or river around, was he looking for a home or running away from one? His remains were just at the shoulder of the road—was he just venturing out or almost to the other side?

Either way, he never stood a chance. The intersection of his body and the car that met it was determined by his gentle stumble and the car’s deceleration entering the ramp; his silent determination and the car’s downshift; his tucking his head into his shell for just a moment.