(~7 minutes to read)
Headline: “Roadkill deaths driving some species to the edge”
The animals of Nickeldime Wood had convened at the Old Lightning Tree for what in less politically-sensitive times would have been referred to colloquially as a pow wow. Friend and foe, and predator and prey were all gathered there. Such meetings were rare, but if one thing was guaranteed to bring them together, it was a common enemy and a potential change of rules in the game of life.
Okay; that was two things.
Nearest to The Tree, chipmunks, squirrels of all colours and habits, mice, voles, marmots and rabbits conversed excitedly, very aware that they were being sized up as potential fodder by the coyotes that sat a few rows back with drool dripping from their great long tongues like meltwater from an icicle. A small herd of deer grazed nervously behind the coyotes, hoping that if push came to shove, the rodents would distract the coyotes long enough for the deer to get the heck out of there.
Between the small rodents and the big dogs sat a number of foxes. Their cubs tumbled with each other, oblivious to the longing stares being stared longingly by the bald eagles roosting in the lower branches of a nearby tree. Now and again, a fox cub would roll into a grumpy porcupine that was sitting next to them shooting quills at a good-looking lady porcupine who was clearly out of his league and looking mightily dis-chuffed.
A great horned owl (it’s always the bloody owl that takes charge in these kind of stories, isn’t it!) sat on the lowest branch of the Old Lightning Tree, mentally taking attendance. Satisfied that all who were able to had arrived, he cleared his throat and caused a pellet of bones and fur to drop on the ground right in front of the voles. Their horrified silence spread throughout the rest of the gathering, and the meeting came to order.
“Thanks for taking time from your hectic survival schedule to be here this evening,” said the owl. “As you know, the roads around here have got a lot busier in the last year or two, due to the opening of that Costco at the corner of the wood. While it’s generated a lot of garbage for some of us to scavenge from, it’s also made life a lot more dangerous for those of us who cross the road with any kind of regularity. You’ve probably heard that the chicken doesn’t cross the road anymore since a BMW helped her be on both sides at the same time.”
Murmurs of “Never could make up her mind which side she wanted to be,” rippled across the crowd. The owl hooted for order.
“In short, those roads are threatening to make us extinct in this region. What chance does a painted turtle stand against a half-ton truck? It’s not like they’re heavily disguised—they’re painted turtles, for pete’s sake! I can see them from miles away—or I would be able to if there were any left in the wood.”
A white-tailed deer sought permission to speak.
“It’s like trench warfare out there!” she said. “You poke your head out of the ditch and run hell for leather, but they get you before you’ve gone more than three paces! I’ve lost three husbands, two common-law partners, three kids, and a couple of sibs since Costco opened!”
“Us ground squirrels are dropping like flies!” said a three-legged specimen of Urocitellus richardsonii. “Tens of us get squished every day! There we are, foraging happily, and perhaps we see a nice grasshopper a foot or two nearer the centre line. Well of course we’re going to go and catch it, but our tiny brains are so focused on the grasshopper that we forget our road-crossing skills. Then… Splat! Our tiny little brains are smeared over a surprisingly large area!”
“Y-e-e-s-s-s; and they taste absolutely di-v-i-i-n-e…” drawled a big black crow that no one had noticed in the Old Lightning Tree.
“Enough of that!” said the owl. “You crows hang about in a murder, just waiting for a vehicle to do your dirty work for you…”
“Better than hanging about in a parliament, boring us all to death with your endless talking!” said the crow.
A kettle of hawks swooped down on the murder of crows and dispersed them. The ground squirrels high-foured each other, then realized that the arrival of the kettle of hawks meant that they had potentially moved from the frying pan to the fire. They milled around trying hard not to be left on the outside of the pack.
“Look,” said the three-legged ground squirrel, “there’s so many of us been squished that if we’d put up a little white cross for each of them, the ditch would look like… like a place with lots of little white crosses! I tell you, we’re all on edge, never knowing who’s going to be next!”
One of the hawks (whose own love of gopher guts equalled the crows’ but whose sense of decorum kept his instincts in check) piped up. “If it wasn’t for the hawks and the crows, that road would be…”
“…and the ravens…” quoth a raven.
“Oh you do carry on! Ravens, rooks, crows; you all look the same!” muttered the hawk.
“Same goes for hawks, kestrels and falcons!” quoth the raven. “Once you’ve seen one hawk, you’ve seen them all!”
“That’s enough!” yelled the owl, his hoot more of a ship’s foghorn than a nocturnal bird’s call. “Look, we know that the ground squirrels are having a hard time of it. But we do have to acknowledge the service provided by the carrion eaters—they’re keeping the place healthy.”
“Healthy?!” screeched a rabbit.
“Sorry, I meant ‘hygienic’,” said the owl. “If I can return the meeting to the issue…”
The oldest and wiliest of the foxes raised a paw. “If I might be allowed to make a suggestion…”
The turned heads and silence were permission enough. One smartsheep (there were no donkeys at the meeting) said under her breath, “Well? What does the fox say?” The coyotes silenced her, gangnam-style.
“Perhaps we should re-organize our lives so that we don’t have to keep on crossing that road,” observed the fox. “After all, we seem to be safe just as long as we don’t go any further than the hard shoulder. This would seem to indicate that we should treat it as an impassable barrier. Now, that might mean that small creatures might get trapped by one of us predators, and feel they have to choose between playing chicken with the traffic and becoming breakfast for one of us. This could be avoided by declaring the hard shoulders a “safe zone”: no creature may catch any other creature while they’re on the edge of the road.”
“But what if some car comes along and drives on the edge?” asked a partridge, who had joined the meeting a few moments earlier.
“Then I suggest we get our brother grizzly bear to arbitrate,” said the fox, smiling wickedly.
“Great idea, Mr. Fox!” said the gophers in unison.
“Yeah, that’s fantastic, Mr. Fox!” said the partridge, picking pear skin out of its teeth.
“Stupid idea!” said the crows in unison. “We’ll bloody starve!” offered one of their number by way of justification.
“Well, I think there is wisdom in what the fox says,” said the owl. (The sheep smiled, vindicated.) “These roadkill deaths are driving us to the edge of the road. It’s the only way to stay safe.”
“So can we vote on this?” asked a ground squirrel. “’The hard shoulders are a safe zone.’ Can we vote?”
And so they voted. The small animals vastly outnumbered the larger ones, and the edge of the road was declared a neutral zone. Predators had to leave the area after ten minutes if their prey hadn’t surrendered.
“How do we make this official? Binding?” asked a chipmunk.
“I’ll get something put in the newspapers,” said the owl. “I’ll tell the humans that even though they’re killing us in droves, we’re more civilized, and have taken the high road by declaring the hard shoulder a neutral zone for predators and prey.”
And so he did.
And the headline read, “Roadkill deaths driving some species to the edge.”