Roadkill Rapid Response Reaction Team, In Action

Left: Post-Impact +14.5 hours.


E. was agitated:

"M-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-C-C-C-C-C-C! I've been calling you and I've been calling you! Coming back from the VFW, the car in front of me on the Capitol City Freeway hit an animal! I had to swerve! It was struggling and it was struggling! Marc! I almost cried!

I don't know if it was a cat or a dog. It was grey, and hard to tell in the dark. The car that hit the animal took an exit - I don't know if it was E Street or J street. Why was the animal even there? I don't like cats but I don't like to see them suffer. Do you know what I mean? M-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-C-C-C-C-C-C! Do you know what I mean? We must go find it!

I remember once travelling on a rainy night with George, and I saw a cat crossing the road, but he didn't see it. And I said 'George, slow down, slow down, there is a cat trying to cross the road. George! Slow down! There is a cat trying to cross the road! The cat is running! George, he is running! Slow down! But it was raining and George didn't see the cat...."

(Hmmm - even if George had been freight train engineer, he could have stopped, it's taking so long to tell this story....)

Anyway, nothing better at 2:30 on Sunday morning than to closely examine the edge of Sacramento's busiest freeway for wounded animals in the dark - half an hour after the bars closed! So, off we went!

Access to the southbound Capitol City freeway as it approaches downtown is notoriously difficult. I drove several miles north, to the Cal Expo exit, and returned south, in order to get access. Once I reached the J Street exit, I realized I had gone too far. I tried to back in reverse, northwards on the freeway shoulder, but eventually gave up - extraordinarily dangerous on the fairly-narrow elevated freeway segment! So, I took the J Street exit, crossed under the freeway, and headed north again, to the Cal Expo exit, and south again, this time parking off the E Street off-ramp. Then off we went on foot, stumbling along the edge of the elevated freeway with a flashlight, trying to reach the site of the accident.

Freeway roadsides can sometimes look rather pleasant, even idyllic, when gazing at them while safely cocooned inside a fast-moving automobile. In fact, freeway roadsides are howling wildernesses, festooned with garbage and metal shards broken off passing trucks. The semi-truck trailers, in particular, shake your very soul with their roar as they pass by. And things you thought were stable and reliable, like bridges, you discover shake and bounce, when you have to traverse them on foot.

The footing was treacherous, but as we approached the J Street exit in the available half light, we didn't find any animal, just two strange discarded mufflers that looked like swollen hot water bottles. We returned to the car, relieved that someone had likely picked up the wounded animal. We departed......

...............

Sunday afternoon, about 1:45 p.m., driving southbound along the same stretch of freeway, I finally saw the animal, lying lifeless roadside on a bridge just north of the J Street exit. Dang! How could we have missed it last night? I guess we didn't quite travel far enough on foot, and somehow we also missed seeing it as we drove slowly past. I wondered if the animal might have a tag that could help me alert its owners to its death. But as J. and I were heading to see DMTC's "Tommy", I couldn't stop at that instant......

...............

Finally, at about 5:30 p.m., I returned to the same vicinity. I parked on H Street near 29th Street, jumped a chain-link fence, and scrambled up the vine-covered embankment, headed north along the freeway, crossed the G Street bridge (to the evident discomfort of the passing motorists surprised to see a pedestrian), and finally reached the animal. No pet. The unfortunate animal was a raccoon......