Hiking Cancelled

They were calling for bad weather so we canceled the Appalachian Trail hike. Turns out the weather has been fine. Grr.

To console ourselves, we ate dinner outside and went for a walk at sunset. To clarify, I live in a suburban neighborhood across from a giant brick hospital that threatens to devour the neighborhood as they purchase a block at a time and expand the great brick wonder. This wouldn't offend me so much if the hospital was a good one, but nearly every local who has had an experience there has had a bad one.

Anyway, the topic of roadkill has been nagging at me since I drove the 30 minutes down to McDaniel on the first night of this course. While we were walking, we came across a number of flattened rabbits and corpses of squirrels.

It boggles me that the advent of the word 'road kill' came after the introduction of the automobile to roads. Previously, I cannot imagine that the horse and buggy did much killing on the roads. In other words, up until the point of the car, there was simply 'kill,' not "roadkill".

The other thing that stupifies me is the fact that when I'm driving or walking as I have done tonight, I find myself slowing down to look as if I simply must know what beast or creature was ended in a flash of asphalt and black rubber.

Today it was a rabbit. I suppose labeling it a rabbit really isn't doing the smear on the road much justice. The front half of what was a rabbit had been flattened so evenly that the relief was in the shape of the rabbit. The only portion of the creature's body that was still 3D was his fluffy white tail. Yes, it was even still white and danced a little as each car whipped past the little corpse. I stopped on the sidewalk and stared at it, laughing. My boyfriend, having seen it and continued with his pace, stopped and looked at me.

Why was that irony so funny? Would it have been funny if it had been a human being plastered to the asphalt? Can I dare to make that comparison?

Don't know, but I'm sure I won't stop pausing to look at the highway's latest victim.