What have you seen in the ditches along the highways?

I saw those big vultures (not exactly in the ditch), but sitting on the side of the road in Mexico once.

Bodies. Not uncommon in Russia. People get drunk and pass out, as they would in any country, but in russia they freeze to death if someone doesn't help them. A friend of mine saw a dead prostitute. Also, I lived by a river, and in the spring a lot of bodies start surfacing from drunks who stumbled in throughout the winter.

Hmm.... I have seen sexy inmates working in ditches.

;-)


hahahahaha

lot's of raccoons. They don't do well on the interstate late at night. One or two every mile on I-64 in VA.
Near my house on a suburban road: roadkill skunk.
Yes, you can smell it a mile away but it isn't as obnoxious a smell as you might think.
Finally, on my five mile commute along urban roads recently, some one had tossed out coat hangers; hundreds and hundreds of coat hangers dropped every few feet. I reckon they were trying to make a point or maybe it was "street art."
I'm sure it made sense to someone.

I was driving down the road last week and for some reason I happened to look to the left. Suddenly a flash of light caught my eye and I knew there was something metallic hidden in the tall grass; something that was partially exposed so that the sunlight could refect. I slowly backed my truck up and scanned the grass. Again, I saw the reflection. I got out of my truck and walked through the grass toward the source of the light. Parting the grass I was pleased to discover a hubcap. Fairly good shape, appeared to be off a Chevy Lumina. I went back to my truck, got my shovel out of the back, came back and buried the hubcap. I erected a small wooded cross so I would always know where the hubcap's final resting place was. When I drive by, I bow my head in reverence.

I was driving down the road last week and something caught my eye as well. I stopped behind the gun-shot RR crossing sign and walked back to where I had seen the shinning thru the grass and sure enough it was an empty pack of Red Man chew stuck to the sole of a boot belonging to gustavratzenhofer with his foot still in it, and his leg and sure enough as my gaze edged up to the horizon, his head face down where he seemed to be sniffing the spore of some passing female collared peccary. His eyes were glazed with the look of love so I got back in my truck and tuned the radio to Armed Forces Network as I shifted out of granny gear double-clutching onto highway 61.

Hard to beat dys's response. A few weeks ago there was a run over deer in a ditch I drive along every working day. After a day or two the carcass became covered by a flock of buzzards. There were too many birds to count. They had the bones stripped clean in one day. Now, occasionally I see bored buzzards picking over the bones on days when road kill is scarce.

At about the same time Dys's truck disappeared over the horizion, the elusive peccary emerged over yonder hill. Our eyes met, she saw me examining the love scat, and soon our bestial grunts filled the air.

Hell of a time amidst the cacti.

Twice, I've seen bread on the road.

A couple months ago I saw a loaf of bread on the shoulder on the interstate. What was weird was the fact that it was a whole, intact loaf, in its bag.

A mile or so down the road, there was another one.

I saw a few of these loaves and began looking for fish and Jesus.

Then I passed an open-bed pickup truck filled with bread. The bakeries around Nashville sell the old bread to farmers for feeding livestock. I just struck me funny seeing bread on the road, one loaf at a time.

About 1989, I had to avoid hitting a bread truck which had spilled probably a hundred loaves onto the highway. One of its doors had come open and a few racks of bagged bread slid out and across the road at probably 45 mph.

EB, you reminded me of a story of mine, which in this case happens to be the whole truth:

I was working at a university environmental center which contracted with the state to provide a "wilderness alternative diversion course" for ajudicated youth. The story doesn't require one to understand that. The director of Youth and Community Services was located in Chicago, more than four hundred miles to the North. His first name was Curt, and he was universally known as Nerdy Curt, an appellation applied with genuine affection. Curt was coming to visit the facility, and had taken the radical decision to drive down to see us. Curt is a city boy and all of his previous experiences of travel had been to take a cab to O'Hare airport and fly to another city. We were a little uneasy.

As the summer evening drew down to sunset, Mark who was the assistant program director suggested to me that Curt was really late by now (he was to have left Chicago at Noon), and asked that i walk out to the highway with him. To get to our facility, Curt would take the Illinois 13 exit of I-57, drive about 15 miles to the Giant City blacktop, go about 12 miles south, and arrive at our facility, which was located on the shores of a 1000 acre lake in the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge.

Finally, we saw headlights coming our way on the blacktop. This road is travelled with sufficient infrequency at that time of day for us to be relatively certain that it was Curt. When he was within about 100 yards of us, a huge doe burst from the undergrowth and darted onto the road. We heard the screech of brakes, but Curt didn't have enough experience to steer in the direction the deer had come from, and hit her head-on. We got Curt out of the car, and he was a bundle of nerves. He was trembling uncontrollably. We finally got him calmed down, and assured him that this can happen to anyone, and that even the deer doesn't know which way she'll jump when she does jump.

Just at that point, a pick-up truck screeched to a sudden stop along side us. I had the following conversation with the passenger:

"Zat yer deer?"

"I s'pose so."

"Road kill?"

"Kinda obvious, ain't it?"

"You gonna keep her?"

"Naw, i ain't interested in skinnin' her out."

"Kin i have her?"

"Help yerself."

He and the driver jumped out, dragged the carcasse to the back of the truck, let down the tail-gate, and with a one-two-three-heave! managed to loft the roughly 1200 pounds of corpse onto the back. They then drove slowly off so as not to lose the precious cargo.

I turned back to find that Curt had completely dissolved into hysteria. He was sure he had landed in the middle of Deliverance and would not make it out alive. He did however, survive the weekend, and went back to DYCS to give us his highest recommendation. He never offered to visit again, though.

He he. City boys.

Someday I would really love to get to see and hear Gus, Dys and Set get together and just start talking. It would be classic. How about it guys?

"Kin i have her?"

Alligators, small ones and large ones, in the ditches alongside US 19, which passes throught the Everglades from Naples to Miami.

This is the old Alligator Alley; the two-lane road, not I-75.

They line the ditches -- well, canals really -- about ten to twenty feet off the shoulder, sunning themselves, without a care and oblivious to the tourists stopping to photograph them.



There's better pictures here.

In the south I saw lots of dead armadilloes. I have seen a horse with it's legs all sticking straight up. There was a dead canada goose with it's mate trying to make it get up. I've also seen live animals: moose, turkeys, deer, badgers, groundhogs, and hawks up in the trees of the ditch.

Has anyone else ever driven across southern Wyoming? Honestly, that is just about the most barren place I've ever seen. After 8 hours of absolutely nothing to look at, no trees, no bushes, no hills, no nothing, my little brother suddenly sat up straight, eyes wide open and shouted, "Look, everybody! Look! It's a dead tire!"

We all laughed 'til we choked.

It became a family joke. We now use that line in West Texas a lot. But at least there are mesquite bushes there.

Lately some wiseacres in Deep-In-The-Hearta have taken an empty longneck and placed it in the little curled paws, giving the deceased the appearance of having drunk himself to death...

Yep, that's a redneck Texas joke if I ever heard one! I'm going there in a few days...will be sure to tell them about it if they haven't already done it themselves.

What could have actually killed that horrible monster?

I have the answer, and it is not comforting. What can kill a 50 foot tall mutant ape? The answer is a 60 foot tall mutant ape.

PDiddie, if I were you I would get out of the state, because chances are there is at least one more of those fierce-looking creatures lurking around, and it already has a taste for blood.