We traveled west to northern New Mexico on a
trek charted by Shaving 2
Snake road hunting inclines one toward
watching for fauna, squished and otherwise, when driving and the twelve hundred
miles from Birmingham to Red River presented a panorama of road kill that I
attempted to share with the shavings.
In the beginning I would wait until close
enough to identify what we were passing and would shout out something like
“dead badger”.
This proved an unsatisfactory
pedagogical approach as the result was always spinning heads in the back seats
and yelps of “where, where?”
In the interest of more timely alerts
I changed to “dead on the left (or right or in the road)”.
This worked pretty well and produced
a round table discussion after each sighting regarding just exactly what was
sighted. While not designed for high speed identification, Flattened Fauna (R. M. Knutson, 1987) might have been of some use.
On the return leg of the trek we
stopped by a small highway curio shop. There was a Navajo (E.B.) lady and her
son in the parking lot and I got a small painted pot. Inside the shop I found,
among other things, rabbit pelts for $2.00. I would have bought one simply based
upon the reasonable price but an animal pelt, of any sort, was simply a gag
opportunity that I could not let pass by.
With the rabbit pelt inside my shirt,
we all piled into the van, and headed east. About 5 minutes down the road (when
there were no nearby cars) I yelled “Dead in the car”, waited until somebody
said “What?” (Just to make sure they had processed the alert) pulled the rabbit
pelt out of my shirt and fired it back over my shoulder into the Shavings.
Instant family life classic.
ML
8.14.12
