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On the Road Again
By Dorothy MacFarlane
Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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 If you take exit 13 off the north bound lane of Route 3, you see a large, dead white pine on the far side of the exit. Look to the top, and quite often, you will see a red tailed hawk sitting in that tree. Recently, I saw three of them, one in the tree, and two circling above the highway. There are lots of dead things on the road, and small animals live at the edges of the road, so there is always something to eat. I’ve never seen a dead hawk there, so these birds have learned about traffic. This is not always the case with raptors. We have a barred owl at the Nature Center, a bird that has a crippled wing and one eye. It was found some years ago, injured, at the edge of a highway in New Hampshire. Many birds are injured or killed in this way each year.
Our highways are dangerous places for all kinds of animals, including people. Animals don’t have much chance to learn about cars as they often don’t get a second chance. People should be able to learn; after all, we have intelligence and foresight. We have memories of other accidents, we read newspapers. And yet, cars keep crashing into other cars, into trees and poles, and going off the edge of the road. Why is that? Did you ever look at a tree that was struck by a car? A large tree will lose some bark, but it still stands there, mocking the mess it made of the car, and probably the people in it.
My dad drove a wrecker for many years, and most of the wrecks he brought in were due to driver error, not mechanical failure. Mostly, they involved speed or alcohol, or both. Seeing the results of all those wrecks sensitized me to the potential for car accidents, and changed my view of driving. It may be that those birds that hunt near exit 13 are smarter than some of us. Not only do we not learn from the past, we keep adding new distractions, such as cell phones. Maybe when you reach exit 13, you should just keep your eyes on the road.
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On the Road Again[Mar. 4, 2008] If you take exit 13 off the north bound lane of Route 3, you see a large, dead white pine on the far side of the exit. Look to the top, and quite often, you will see a red tailed hawk sitting in that tree. Recently, I saw three of them, one in the tree, and two circling above the highway.
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