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There is a fuck of a lot of roadkill where I live. I frequently refer to Pennsylvania as "The Roadkill State" (Officially, we are "The Keystone State") and it's with good cause, damn it. This morning, on one of the prettier fall mornings I've seen this year, I set out to give all ya'll faithful readers a visual tour of the roadkill I see on my way to work. (Digression: Now, most people like fall mornings where the air is crisp and clear and the sky is so bright blue that the trees aren't all that impressive. I like fall mornings where the sky is flat and grey-white, where it's not quite raining, and where the damn trees are the brightest thing around. To me, this is the prettier sort of fall morning, plus all the wet leaves make it *smell* like fall. Here is what it looked like at my house this morning, so that you can see what a proper fall morning looks like.) Anyway. My drive to work is roughly 22 miles of Route 30, in Pennsylvania, from outside of Breezewood to Bedford. All of the following pictures were taken today. I didn't include any of the interesting things dead on the road to my horse, because that would be cheating, and I didn't save up roadkills on Route 30 so that I could give you a big list of stuff accumulated over the summer. This is only today's visible roadkill.

These pictures are not posed or photoshopped or anything, so there are guts and stuff. If you think you might be upset by looking at reasonably-clear pictures of things that died rather violently and have probably been run over more than a few times postmortem, please don't click on the links. Thanks.

Porcupine I've had people tell me with a straight face that there ain't no porcupines living in these parts. This one isn't, not anymore.

Opossum There usually aren't any skid marks in front of a possum. They're unlovely marsupials with large, rat-like tails. Also reasonably nocturnal, these hiss at you if you scare one up.

Red fox This is an unusual roadkill -- we don't have tons of red foxes around and now I suppose we have one less. *sigh* I kind of like red foxes.

White-tailed Deer I was worried that there would not be a deer for our tour of roadkill on my way to work, but someone kindly hammered this one last night on the bridge at the Everett bypass, so I was able to present you with a deer, one of our most common and most noticeable roadkill critters.

Raccoon This is a pretty old roadkill, at least four or five days. I was glad it wasn't gone because I really was hoping for a clean sweep of the mammals in this county... but no such luck. Beavers, bobcats, and rabbits were uncooperative. Squirrels are usually not long-lived roadkill along Route 30 because they get squished to nothing too fast, so I don't have one of those for you, either. *sigh*

Groundhog? This one is pretty torn up, but based on the visible foot and fur color, I'm thinking groundhog.

Skunk Last week, I'd have been able to get you five or six of these. We had a slew of them on the road.

Dunno. I'm thinking maybe fox. Could also be someone's pet. Thoughts?

Groundhog This is a fairly fresh roadkill in pretty decent shape. It's definitely a groundhog.

Are these all the roadkills? No. I had to pass by a few (looked like two or three squirrels, a really torn-up possum, a skunk, and a couple of maybe-roadkill lumps) because there was no shoulder on the road to stop and take pictures. Route 30 is a pretty busy drag -- the cars fly along -- so playing in traffic is probably not the smartest thing to do on a foggy Thursday morning. I don't want to be roadkill myself, you know.

In other news, I also did horse things. I reviewed sacking out and feet with Mezcal and did circle tests for pivoting with Nick. (Circle test: draw circle, about 2' (Edit: That used to read 2"... I blame Bloody Stupid Johnson.) across, in dirt with foot. Put front or hind feet (your choice) of horse in circle. Pivot other end of horse around the feet in the circle. If horse moves the placed feet out of the circle, you lose.) We did fine with pivoting the hind around the front and we need to work on pivoting the front around the hind. That's good to know, gives us somewhere to start working. It was a short morning due to the roadkill project.