verging_on_random

Roadkill

I live about three km out of town and when I moved in, I thought it would be a good morning walk. I still think so but I find myself more and more reluctant to do it. The reason? The cumulative impact of the daily road toll on native wildlife is too depressing.

Today’s specimen was a mountain brushtail possum - magnificent animals, with thick black coats, pink noses and an impressively loud unearthly cry that must have struck terror into the hearts of early European settlers. This one was squashed flat. I smelt it before I saw it; it’s a frequent experience, the stench of a rotting animal corpse. Some days there might be three or four in the three km stretch.

In six months I’ve counted eight dead wallabies, today’s possum, plus several pigeons, a kookaburra, a noisy mynah (no big loss), a couple of young magpies, a galah, plus countless lizards and snakes. They’re just what I’ve seen walking one or two days a week, on a road without much traffic. Lots more are in the bush where I can smell but not see them and presumably even more crawl away injured to die somewhere else.

Multiply that experience by the thousands of km of rural roads in Australia and the carnage must be frightful. Yet we all just shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to it as an inevitable price to be paid to gratify our own selfish wish to be able to drive wherever we want whenever we want at a terrific speed.

I am as guilty of this as anyone, of course, but I think that when the planet finally decides to rub us out, the remaining species (if there are any left) can be forgiven if they give three loud cheers.

Criminologist:

And crawling on the planet’s face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time, and lost in space
And meaning.

(The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

I better STFU or I’ll be accused of leftist self-loathing .