Remembering Road Kill

Mark, Stuart and I took the dogs for a walk this afternoon. The sky was cloudy and looked like it was going to rain, so we thought we would get some exercise in before it got wet.

As we walked along the road, I saw something that made me think of my first day in Paradise.

It was November 1st when I drove into Paradise for the first time.  Mark had already been here for a couple of weeks, working and trying to find us a house.  We met at the realtor’s office on Skyway and proceeded to fill out and sign the paperwork.  They gave us the keys and I followed Mark over to the new house.  While driving those residential roads, I saw what appeared to be several dead animals lying in the road.

It made me wonder what kind of place this was that they couldn’t even clean up the road kill off the streets.  I also wondered if people ran over small animals on purpose.  Was this some kind of entertainment on the ridge?  Did leaving them in the road count towards your score?  And where were the buzzards anyway?

It was difficult to say, from my vantage point, just what kind of animals it was lying in the road.  It looked hairy, that’s for sure.  It wasn’t until I was right on top of the first one, that I realized it wasn’t an animal at all!

Evidently, there had just been a windy kind of storm in the area, and all the pine trees had their dead needles blown off.  The movement of cars up and down the streets had created what is now known in our family as “Pine Needle Road Kill”.  Mark and I laughed and laughed about my mistake.

Since we do have dead critters in the road from time to time, it has taken me some time to stop thinking those pine needle bundles aren’t some kind of animal.  Sometimes I still make the mistake.  And it always happens just about this time of year when the storms start coming.  And then I start remembering…