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Roadkill

Verdance

Entry posted by Verdance in Misc writings

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When I was a little kid I used to think a lot of silly things. One thing that used to seem to important to me was, “If I was an animal, what animal would I be?” I never could answer the question, and it kind of bothered me. It was the kind of thing that teachers at the elementary homeschool co-op would ask their kids when we came in once a week, for icebreakers. Well, when I got out of elementary school, my parents started sending me and my brothers to public charter school, and from middle to high school I cycled through every possible type of school you could go to, excluding like, boarding school or military academy. Public charter, private christian, full public, and eventually back to a homeschool co-op. 

Around my senior year I started learning to drive. Moving from the backseat and putting away my ever present fiction novel in the car showed me something that I had never noticed before: roadkill. Now, I have heard of the concept of an animal getting hit by a car before. But the glimpses of bloody, twisted, rotting bodies just sitting in the middle of the road, or even worse, fetid skeletons up close on walks, they shook me. Sitting in a car and suddenly spotting a bloody corpse just sitting in the middle of the road might make me a but sad, but just walking along listening to music and suddenly spotting in the grass the skull of a deer draped in rotting fur staring back at you, that truly startles me. I see deer, squirrels, birds, possums, and other unidentifiable corpses almost every time I drive.

And you have to wonder. How does this happen? Are these animals truly so unaware as to run right in front of a vehicle roaring by at fifty miles per hour? What makes them so desperate, that they have to cross now, that they can’t just wait for danger to pass? A deer can hear me slowly pass in the woods, and runs away when i get less than fifty yards away. Why is there no fear from something much larger, louder, and faster? Do people just not notice? Either when the animal is trying to cross, or when they just leave something in the road, for weeks? It’s like they’re just something that exists, a part of the road, a force traveling across the pavement and not a conscious being with a soul and with choices. Don’t get me wrong. Animal lives aren’t worth the same as humans. But I find it interesting that half of the animal kingdom I see is dead on the asphalt. Sometimes it feels like it’s pure luck, that some cross, and others are killed in a moment. It’s both animals choice and the drivers choice. 

Sometimes I wonder, will I cross?

TW: intense imagery, slightly depressing themes. Nothing about SH’y topics, just dread about becoming and adult

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Denissimo

Denissimo High Prelan

Posted

The last paragraph. Well put.
Perhaps it was always a choice after all.

I accidentally rambled for a few paragraphs after that. Read at your own risk.
 

Spoiler

At its core, roadkill is a collision between worlds: the human domain of speed, infrastructure, and intention, and the animal domain of instinct, territory, and unreflective being. A road is not just a strip of asphalt, but a declaration that human purposes override everything else in that space. Roadkill, then, becomes a kind of unintended testimony to that claim. It’s not just death, but death produced by indifference.

There’s something morbidly fixating about the anonymity of it. When an animal dies in the wild, it’s usually part of a visible chain of predation, starvation, disease. There’s context, even if it’s brutal. But roadkill is often stripped of narrative. A body appears on the roadside with no witnessed story, no ritual, no acknowledgment. I find this invokative of existentialist ideas: a life ends abruptly, without inherent meaning, and the world continues unchanged. The passing cars don’t mourn. Hell, they barely register it.

Roadkill raises uncomfortable questions about responsibility. No one intends to kill that animal (usually), yet collectively, human systems make such deaths inevitable. It’s a form of distributed harm where accountability is so diffuse that it effectively disappears. That challenges simple ethical frameworks that rely on clear agents and intentions.

How do we experience roadkill? Most people avert their gaze. That reflex says something: we recognize, even if subconsciously, that what we’re seeing is not just “a dead animal,” but a disruption of the ordinary flow of life. It’s a moment where the hidden cost of our mobility becomes visible. The road promises efficiency and progress, but the body on the shoulder reveals the price paid by those who never consented to that system.

Finally, there’s an almost absurdist aspect. The randomness of which animal gets hit, when, and by whom: there’s no apparent grand design, no justice. It just happens. That randomness can feel trivial or grotesque, depending on how you look at it. Yet in that randomness, you might see a reflection of a larger truth: much of existence operates without regard for meaning, and meaning is something we impose afterward.

 

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Verdance

Verdance Worldbringer

Posted

3 minutes ago, Denissimo said:

The last paragraph. Well put.
Perhaps it was always a choice after all.

I accidentally rambled for a few paragraphs after that. Read at your own risk.
 

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At its core, roadkill is a collision between worlds: the human domain of speed, infrastructure, and intention, and the animal domain of instinct, territory, and unreflective being. A road is not just a strip of asphalt, but a declaration that human purposes override everything else in that space. Roadkill, then, becomes a kind of unintended testimony to that claim. It’s not just death, but death produced by indifference.

There’s something morbidly fixating about the anonymity of it. When an animal dies in the wild, it’s usually part of a visible chain of predation, starvation, disease. There’s context, even if it’s brutal. But roadkill is often stripped of narrative. A body appears on the roadside with no witnessed story, no ritual, no acknowledgment. I find this invokative of existentialist ideas: a life ends abruptly, without inherent meaning, and the world continues unchanged. The passing cars don’t mourn. Hell, they barely register it.

Roadkill raises uncomfortable questions about responsibility. No one intends to kill that animal (usually), yet collectively, human systems make such deaths inevitable. It’s a form of distributed harm where accountability is so diffuse that it effectively disappears. That challenges simple ethical frameworks that rely on clear agents and intentions.

How do we experience roadkill? Most people avert their gaze. That reflex says something: we recognize, even if subconsciously, that what we’re seeing is not just “a dead animal,” but a disruption of the ordinary flow of life. It’s a moment where the hidden cost of our mobility becomes visible. The road promises efficiency and progress, but the body on the shoulder reveals the price paid by those who never consented to that system.

Finally, there’s an almost absurdist aspect. The randomness of which animal gets hit, when, and by whom: there’s no apparent grand design, no justice. It just happens. That randomness can feel trivial or grotesque, depending on how you look at it. Yet in that randomness, you might see a reflection of a larger truth: much of existence operates without regard for meaning, and meaning is something we impose afterward.

 

That is cooler than the story i wrote myself!

thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Denissimo

Denissimo High Prelan

Posted

3 minutes ago, Verdance said:

That is cooler than the story i wrote myself!

thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Doubtful. You write in a way that is pleasing to the mind.
I write so that I can read it 3 years later and think "Who the heck was I, 3 years ago?"
The glory of screwing with oneself temporally. Epitome of one who has responsibilities but can't be bothered to address them.

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Verdance

Verdance Worldbringer

Posted

Just now, Denissimo said:

Doubtful. You write in a way that is pleasing to the mind.
I write so that I can read it 3 years later and think "Who the heck was I, 3 years ago?"
The glory of screwing with oneself temporally. Epitome of one who has responsibilities but can't be bothered to address them.

I am less pleased with this one than my fiction, but it’s trying to make people think, and i think it’s achieved that goal

Denissimo

Denissimo High Prelan

Posted

Just now, Verdance said:

I am less pleased with this one than my fiction, but it’s trying to make people think, and i think it’s achieved that goal

You'd quite enjoy a book, known as "A hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world". It will screw with your head, but most pleasantly so.

Verdance

Verdance Worldbringer

Posted

1 minute ago, Denissimo said:

You'd quite enjoy a book, known as "A hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world". It will screw with your head, but most pleasantly so.

*immediately placed on my library hold list*

Denissimo

Denissimo High Prelan

Posted

Just now, Verdance said:

*immediately placed on my library hold list*

Written by a japanese guy called Murakami. He writes in a wonderous manner.
Or at least, his translator does.

I admit, I loved roadkill before existentialism took hold.

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