Collection of Road Specimens
Once you have become hooked on flat animals, the urge to collect representative specimens emerges quite naturally. You might even wish to prepare the particularly prime examples as wall mounts or paperweights. Resist that temptation! I have repeatedly discouraged the accumulation of flattened specimens by private collectors, although limited collecting for colleges and university museums might be acceptable. (Please check with the museum before delivering specimens and be certain that you have a Department of Highways collection license.7)
There are at least five good reasons to limit collecting. First, the collection process is so dangerous in most situations that it is better left to the few expert flattened fauna collectors. Miscalculation of the speed of approaching vehicles is what created the road fauna in the first place, and there is little reason to risk adding yourself to the specimens already there. Second, fleas, mites, lice, and rabies, all of which can be acquired from too-fresh specimens, should discourage even the bravest student. Third, specimens in your private collection can no longer be enjoyed by the potentially thousands of road fauna students who are certainly behind you, guides in hand, and eyes on the road. Fourth, the necessary collection equipment is cumbersome, specialized, and seldom available to any but the serious professional. A heavy-duty scraper is essential and may have to be specially built, although a sturdy sidewalk ice-scraper will work for many smaller mammals and nearly all birds. And finally, in most states the possession of any non-game animal or bird is illegal, regardless of its condition. If you must collect, behave within the law and approach the task with all the caution and care that any dangerous activity requires.
A photographic record of specimens is often superior to the specimen itself, at least for ease of storage (photos are one of the few things flatter than the flattened animal, and digital storage removes any potential space constraints). The challenge of taking a clear photograph at highway speeds should stimulate even the seasoned camera buff. Although motion pictures or digital video are inappropriate to the subject matter, a good digital still camera should produce satisfactory results even at 55 mph.
Only bird identification is likely to be dependent on color, and most of the non-avian road fauna is protectively colored. That is, it more or less resembles the highway, especially after a few days. Flattened-fauna researchers are not certain whether the typical coloration is a specific adaptation to the road habitat, or whether it is merely accidental. Most think nearly everything that happens on the road is accidental, or at least not planned or designed.
How to Use This Book
In the interest of safety, the solitary driver should not attempt initial use of this guide. Bring a friend to use the key and the page numbers for the probable specimen spotted. More advanced students can probably dispense with the key on this page for all but the most confusing examples. As experience accumulates, it may be necessary only to refer to those illustrations of less frequently seen animals. Experienced solo drivers may keep the opened guide on the passenger seat and glance at the illustrations, but any more extensive use of the guide should be for the copilot or the soloist during rest stops.
Beginners and even advanced students will find it generally impossible to engage in long-term observation of a specimen in order to compare it to the illustrations and descriptions. By contrast with creatures from more stable habitats, members of the road fauna are ephemeral in at least two ways. First, the presence of any specimen in the road habitat is short term. The time between the animal’s entry into the flattened mode and its disappearance from the road is brief. Depending on traffic and climatic factors (season, rainfall, etc.) anywhere from one to four days normally pass while the animal gradually becomes indistinguishable from the road surface. On Nebraska highways during the early 1940s, mean observation time was established at four days. On a major interstate in the twenty-first century, potential observation time may be measured in hours. Some medium-sized animals have remarkable persistence (see muskrats, this page). Second, since the observer is generally in motion, the time available for making a single observation passes all too quickly. Five seconds is the measured average at highway speeds. Even in the unusual circumstance where you can stop briefly to examine the specimen, such observations must be done at a distance. The road habitat is far too dangerous for any leisurely contemplation of fine features. Most times, a brief look and spotting a couple of clear field marks or even a single salient feature must suffice.
Identification will sometimes be difficult and occasionally impossible. Only rough estimates of measurements can be made. Many of the descriptions and illustrations that follow emphasize single, critical identifying features. This guide is therefore much less complex than many field guides; behavior or vocalizations are not prominently displayed by most flattened fauna.
The key on this page separates the road animals into four categories (mostly on the basis of single characteristics). And within each category the animals are listed by size, from smallest to largest. Comparisons with lane markers and painted stripes provide the only consistent size indication available in the five seconds from seeing to passing. A standard lane marker or no-passing yellow line is four and a half inches wide. When lane markers are presented on the illustrations, they are drawn to the same scale as the specimen.
Suggestions to facilitate more accurate identifications, given a longer examination time, are included for categories that contain many different species. However, I cannot overemphasize the danger of careless inattention to genuine road-habitat hazards. Better to conclude that a particular specimen is probably a vole than to be certain it is Microtus pennsylvanicus and join it on the road.
Animal Posture and Presentation on the Road
Only a few representative photocopies and illustrations are provided for the snake, amphibian, and bird sections. Most birds assume such a multitude of shapes on the road that no single photocopy or silhouette will help in identification. Color characteristics are the critical features for birds, but the colors may be almost anywhere. Fortunately, the relative proportion of various colors remains consistent for most birds, and those proportions lend themselves more to verbal description than to any illustration.
Mammals, particularly those with more or less compact shapes, will develop only a few distinct patterns on the road. For those with short legs and a broad body, the usual pattern has one leg on each corner, with the flattening proceeding dorsi-ventrally (top to bottom). Badgers and woodchucks provide the best example of this pattern. They are so rarely found in a lateral presentation (on their side), with all legs extending in one direction, that no illustration of that posture is included. Larger animals or those with longer legs may be found in several typical postures. Genuine dorsi-ventral flattening is uncommon for rabbits, for example. They may be found with legs extending from the center in almost any direction. The silhouettes shown here (two or more are offered where appropriate) for most animals take into account presentational possibilities. Some mammal silhouettes are idealized patterns meant to help in pointing out specific identifying features, while others are photocopies of actual specimens. The latter are distinguished by their usually rougher outlines and somewhat more irregular shape.
It is impossible to represent all the variation found in a species, even with a number of illustrations. The problem is compounded in the case of flattened fauna by the rapid changes in form immediately following the animal’s appearance on the road. The illustrations are not meant to encompass all possible variations, but to present, whenever possible, the form toward which that particular animal tends on the road. Even though the truly flattened specimen is as rare on the road as are ideal forms in the real world, it may be a useful philosophical concept. Animals of the road fauna clearly tend toward two dimensions, and the inherent beauty of a near-perfectly flattened creature must be seen to be appreciated. Serious photographers and even painters have just begun to recognize the artistic possibilities embodied in the an
imals of the road. The sense of serenity, even peacefulness, conveyed by a completely flattened animal provides an often startling, possibly meaningful, contrast to the barely controlled highway violence that produced it.
The flattest and somehow most persistent flat fauna of all are the few representations where the animal itself is long gone, but it somehow lingers in recognizable form. I know of only two examples. The first is the unmistakable shadow of a squirrel that had been flattened on a highway just before the machinery painting a new center stripe passed by. The squirrel, originally painted over, eventually disappeared, but the area where it had been retained the shadow of a squirrel until the next repainting of the center stripe. The only other known example was the image of a fast-flying pigeon on a seldom washed second story window of a chapel-auditorium at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. The slightly oily feathers of the pigeon had been impressed onto the glass, and while feathers and bird were both gone, the tiny dust particles that had adhered to the oil imprint persisted for years; flat enough to be only vaguely visible with the right slant of light, but clearly a pigeon, with its wings spread and its head cocked quizzically to one side.
The Most Dangerous Animals on the Road
Your safaris into the road habitat will not be without danger, even if you stay in your car and proceed at speed limits. Any animal larger than a burly, adult raccoon is potentially life-threatening or at least vehicle damaging. Information about road fauna–caused accidents and fatalities is mostly available from North America, where our long-time romance with the automobile encourages us to keep track of such happenings.
Most of North America’s large, wild mammals have been dramatically reduced in numbers, but there are exceptions. On a strictly numerical basis the North American white-tailed deer is much more dangerous than in any previous era and clearly the most dangerous animal on the highway. It is not as large as an elk nor as slow as a cow, but clearly “tis enough”. The state of Michigan counts more than 50,000 deer-vehicle interactions per year; not unusual considering that in some locations deer populations may reach or exceed 70 animals per square mile. In the United States, the National Safety Council reported 29,000 motorists injured and 211 fatalities in on-road animal–vehicle crashes in 1995, nearly all of them involving white-tailed deer. Annually, an average of about 150 people die in the U.S. from deer-car crashes. By comparison, less than one person per year is injured or killed in attacks by bears, an animal we are likely to consider more dangerous.
For the numbers of animals actually present in the off-road habitat, moose are even more dangerous. While moose populations are always low, when they wander onto the road, they are truly frightening. An adult moose may weight 1500 pounds, and its legs are long enough to keep most of it above the usual motorist line-of-sight, particularly at night. The state of Maine has about 700 moose-car crashes per year and one-fourth of them result in serious injury or death to drivers and passengers. Of course, it is not good for the moose either.
The future in North America may hold some potential problems that have been absent as long as we have had highways. A consortium of environmental groups and some individuals (Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Ted Turner, and the American Prairie Foundation) are engaged in a long-term plan to restore the animals and plants of the Great Plains from the Canadian border south to Nebraska. The expectation is that the American bison, elk, and other large mammals could be assisted to repopulate areas from which development and most human inhabitants would be excluded. Nearly 2 million acres are potentially involved. Highways will most certainly cross the area and a migrating herd of a few hundred bison would probably force an automobile off the road. Kind of like the problems faced in some of the African game parks, where an outraged rhinoceros can make a vehicle seem frail indeed.
Don’t expect flattened bison any time soon, but it is well to plan for a probable future. North American roadways may become even more dangerous than they are now.
A Quick Key to the Major Groups of Flattened Fauna
What follows is called a dichotomous key, a standard device used in most guides and manuals to separate categories of plant or animal organisms. Each numbered “couplet” is meant to provide two statements that include all possible conditions and are mutually exclusive: feathers present versus feathers absent, for example. The numbers at the end of the statement tell you where to go next—either to a specific description on a numbered page or to the couplet with the next highest number.
1 Feathers present, often brightly colored, often flapping in the breeze from passing vehicles.
BIRDS, this page
(If it has wings and no apparent feathers, see bats, this page)
1 Feathers absent, seldom any bright colors and almost nothing flapping in the breeze.
2
2 More than 12 times longer than broad; no legs or other appendages.
SNAKES, this page
2 Less than eight times longer than broad; leg, foot, or tail sometimes visible.
3
3 More or less fur-covered; fur sometimes visible only around the edges.
MAMMALS, this page
3 No fur present (if animal is larger than twelve inches in any dimension and no fur is apparent, it may be a very old mammal or an armadillo).
LEGGED REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS, this page
Size Determination
A standard lane marker or no-passing line is 4½ inches wide. Some of the illustrations and photocopies indicate the actual size of the specimen by showing an outline of a lane marker drawn to the same scale as the specimen.
7 Just kidding—there is no such thing as a Department of Highways Collection License; at least not yet.
chapter 3
Snakes become part of the flattened fauna more commonly than their off-road numbers might indicate. Some herpetologists have suggested that nearly all snakes in heavily traveled parts of the country have found their way onto the road permanently, with a resultant reduction in their numbers off the road. Being cold-blooded, snakes will seek out warm places as the daily temperature cools, especially in the spring and fall. Before highways were built, they sought out large, flat, sun-warmed rocks, and stayed warm throughout the night. When asphalt and concrete highways were built, snakes must have felt grateful to the creators of such magnificent flat rocks—at least until the first car passed. In the golden age of herpetology, now long past, collectors could go out on new roads almost any spring or fall night and expect to find a satisfactory cross-section of live basking snakes. With increasing traffic, the only cross-sections to be found on the road are individual snakes that dozed off, evenings, on the warm asphalt. A reduction in snake numbers has paralleled the increase in highway construction—the snakes that remain have not yet come to terms with the automobile. Only the burrowing snakes are increasing in numbers.
Snakes present the most serious identification problem to be found on the road. Flattened snakes seldom show their colors to anyone who can’t conduct a minute examination. Head shape and the presence or absence of specially shaped or divided individual scales do not survive the transition to flat. General body shape is similar for all snakes from the largest bull snake (Pituophis melanoleucus), eight feet long maximum, to the smallest ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus), less than one foot long. All snakes have a thick end and a thin end, with a more or less gradual taper in between. The challenge is to distinguish snakes as a group from any of the numerous long, narrow, non-animal objects that litter the highway (see “Mimicry”). Tree branches, bits of wire cable or rope, and long, thin fragments of tire tread may occasionally mimic snakes on the road. Precise observations of shape will nearly always separate snakes from other artifacts. Snakes, even when thoroughly flattened, are smooth for nearly their entire length, and on the ends as well. Artifacts, however, will show frayed edges or ends in almost every case. Most artifacts will be of nearly uniform diameter for their whole length, while snakes are variously but consistently tapered.
; One-half size. Photocopy by Canon NP-350F.
This photocopy represents most of the critical features of road snakes. The gradual taper toward the tail is characteristic, as is the slight enlargement of the head end. The curve of the body is the result of reflex movement and is more common than a nearly straight presentation. Given time and traffic, any snake can look like this, and almost no road mimic will show this whole combination of attributes.
Because so few species’ characteristics survive flattening and baking, road snakes must be identified in general categories. The following pages distinguish small snakes from large snakes, and provide a list of the most likely victims nationwide in each category. Snakes that do retain some color or scale characteristics may be identified by close examination and reference to any of the standard live animal guides (see section on collecting specimens for instructions and cautions). Unlike with live snakes, you need not approach road snakes warily. No flattened snake is likely to attack, and very few of them are poisonous. However, do not stick your finger in the mouth of even the flattest snake.
SMALL SNAKES
Flattened Fauna, Revised Page 3