Bunny Rabbit v. Lincoln Continental

I've recently started doing a bit of commuting to work which gives me a couple of hours a day to ponder "stuff".

One of the things that I have noticed has been the large number of animals that appear to have had nothing left to live for. Maybe Mrs. Skunk was berating Mr. Skunk about his lack of motivation when searching out grubs for dinner or maybe the chipmunk just couldn't take the daily strain of nut gathering. Thank goodness we humans put a lot of roads through the woods to help with their suicide by automobile. Maybe it isn't that complicated. Maybe it is just the young groundhogs hanging around with nothing to do and playing "chicken" with the tandem axle dump trucks?

I was going to try and count the number of flattened animals on the way in to work but lost count pretty quickly. The early census revealed a chipmunk, two squirrels, a skunk, a groundhog, three birds, 3 snakes (although one may have been a fan belt),two turtles and a couple of unidentifiable fur mounds. I think I feel the worst for the reptiles. The poor old box turtle takes an eternity to clear the traffic lanes and has a couple hundred times the chance of getting crushed than say a hyperactive squirrel. Then you have the snakes. They are relatively slow but their main issue would be length. Most of the black snakes around here run 3' - 4' long which means they've got a high hit ratio when compared to the chipmunk. Now that I think about it, birds have issues too. Not only do they have to watch out for tires, they've got the rest of the vehicle to worry about. Might explain the high number of our winged friends?

If ya'll stop running over our forest friends, I'll have to ponder something else on the ride home!