Back to StoriesRoadkill: An Emergency Responder, Absent A Gun, Is Handed A Grim Task
September 18, 2017
Roadkill: An Emergency Responder, Absent A Gun, Is Handed A Grim TaskIn his column debut, Steve Primm writes about finding carnage along a wildlife migration corridor in the Madison Valley
The red
emergency lights from the fire truck sweep over the elk. She is sternal, her legs drawn up under her,
head and neck up. Such long necks. “F--k,” I exhale, seeing that there is still
active, unfolding carnage here. I can
see the driver, sitting up in the pickup cab, face lit by the glow of his
phone. The pale blue airbag lays limp
from the steering wheel.
My mind
clicks into triage mode: I want to do
something about the elk, but, as a firefighter, there are things I have to do
first. Size up the scene, and relay the
information over the radio. Check the
vehicle occupants, then get high-vis emergency signs out on either side of the
wreck. Avoiding secondary crashes on the
dark highway is top priority.
Most of
the fluid in the road is elk blood. How
they survive is beyond me. I step past
the elk – she’s in shock and pain, swaying her head slightly -- and around the
open door of the pickup. It’s a nice
enough pickup that it came with the satellite emergency service, and the
reassuring, metallic voice in some distant call center is what I hear
first.
The
driver is ok. He says so. I tell him a lot of people decide they aren’t
ok after an airbag has punched them in the face and chest, but he’s a big healthy
guy, so he probably is ok. There’s a
slight airbag burn on the inside of his right forearm. The pickup can go no further, but is safely
on the shoulder.
I back
the fire truck up, climb up top, and heave one of the “Emergency Scene” signs
down onto the pump. I climb down after
it, and set it on the road shoulder. I stand
it upright, and unfurl it. Then I drive
a ¼ mile forward, pull a u-turn, and do the same for the northbound lane.
I hope
the elk has died while I do this. She
has not. I hear her panicked,
blood-flooded breathing as I walk back up to the disabled pickup. I am monitoring radio chatter now, and know
that a lawman with a firearm is 40 minutes away.
The
driver is still doing fine, though disoriented.
Stunned, as we all would be, to find himself becalmed in the dark. Predictable
plans, distance = rate x time, point A to point B, shot to Hell. He tells me there were elk all over the road,
and he couldn’t avoid them.
There are
elk in the big foothills meadows here every spring. Lots of them.
US Highway 287 slices right through a migration corridor. It connects elk that spend part of the year in Yellowstone with winter range to the west. Lots
of highways cut through migration corridors in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem. Lots of animals, a surprising number, suffer fatal collisions with
vehicles or they resist trying to make a crossing.
I am an
emergency responder so my first duty is always to render aid to injured people.
No one provides triage for the wild four leggeds.
The tall
sagebrush and the scattered aspen stands upslope are ideal calving grounds –
lots of food, lots of places to hide their babies until they’re strong enough
to run with the herd. The highway
separates the foothills from the river, though, and lactating cow elk need a
lot of water. No mother is going to deny her offspring what they need.
I walk
back to the fire truck, its big V8 rumbling, lights flashing. I think about my grim options in the absence
of me not carrying a gun: Halligan. Small sledge hammer. Pike pole.
The spike on the Halligan has its merits, but I can’t place it
accurately on a moving target, especially one that could still deliver a
dangerous kick or swing of the head.
The axe
is the only choice. I unstrap it from
the truck, and test the handle’s fit to head.
I resolve to do this, to put the badly injured animal out of her misery. I
walk back to the pickup and tell the driver what I am going to do. I slip out of my bunker coat so I can move
freely.
How many
blows will it take? I do not know. The
elk had maybe sensed my energy, and struggled briefly to her feet. Punctured lungs and broken bones could not
carry her far. She wanted to leave our
domain, to cross the old barb wire fence back into the tall, dewy sage. She could not. The first blow, in the big target just ahead
of her shoulders, paralyzed her, so that I could safely and efficiently do the
rest.
Herds of
cow elk can be very vocal. They call back
and forth as they move, probably keeping track of one another – kews, squeals,
chirps. They make a percussive, single
bark if they’re alarmed. Especially in
fog, or in a snowstorm, it’s easy to imagine them as something other than
terrestrial. A pod of whales or a
flight of tundra swans come to mind. This
elk was probably too savagely hurt to call out, but she wanted to be away from
us, and back with her own.
Brain scans
show that social animals – including humans – feel isolation or exclusion the
same way they feel physical trauma.
The elk is
laid on her side. I draw my knife, slice
through hide and carotids to make sure this is over. I shine
my flashlight across her ribcage, watching for breathing. Muscle tremors pass through her, then
subside. A final exhale, and her legs
extend. Then, stillness.
I set the
bloody axe down, and get back into my bunker coat as a I cool down from the
exertion. The night air is moist, and
holds the smells of elk, blood, coolant, and transmission fluid. A sliver of waxing moon marks the western
horizon.
She is
not the first large mammal I’ve euthanized with something besides a
firearm. A learned friend pointed out to
me that euthanasia literally means “good death,” and asked whether the term is
elastic enough to cover my atrocities. “Brutal”
now beats “painless” after a long wait, is the best I can come up with.
It is
quiet – a few long-haul truckers on the highway, but we’re otherwise out here
alone, the three of us. We are thrown
together in a tableau: an ancient
creature, running on last ditch panic, cut off from her kind; and two men,
armored with technology, summoning what we need over miles, messages bounced
through space. We collide, we bleed, we
hurt. We try to set things right and be
on our way.
The elk
lies where I killed her. There is roadside litter near her – the ubiquitous
smashed plastic water bottle, an empty cigarette pack – and I move it
away. She is not in repose – battered, bloody,
smashed, hacked, and cut – but at least she rests in native grass and silvery
green sagebrush, and not among our careless, ugly cast-offs.
Leaving
her with road trash would be surrendering to our human selfishness, callousness: as though the elk – like an empty bottle, a
full diaper, a smoked cigarette – was of no more use to us. That she became inconvenient because she
wasn’t posing for photos in the golden twilight or providing a “challenge” for
someone to shoot at. She and her herd
got thirsty, and crossed the dark highway to head to the river.
The deputy
sheriff arrives from the other side of the county. He efficiently dispatches his duties. With a non-injury accident, satisfying the
insurance company is the main requirement, so he gathers the information he
needs. We figure out how the driver will
find his way to a bed soon, and wait for the tow truck.
Where did
the other elk go? Did they flee the
mayhem of the highway, the way they’d bolt away from a predator taking one of
them? Are they out on the dark
rangeland, waiting for us to end our blockade of lights, engines, voices? Do they mourn for the one lost? I have seen mother elk stand vigil for hours
after a grizzly had taken one of their calves, circling, pacing, watching. What does an elk understand of death? Those who object to anthropomorphizing maybe
have it backwards: it’s not that elk
don’t know what we know, it’s that we know far less than we credit ourselves
for.
The tow
truck arrives to take away the totaled pickup.
Hydraulic pumps whine, heavy steel hooks clank, and the winch draws the
truck up onto the tilt bed. We all
exchange wishes for safe travels. I reverse
what I can of what I’ve done here, picking up the high-vis signs, turning off the
supernova of flashing lights. I radio
dispatch that I’m clear of scene, and make my way home.
Home is
where the elk was when she got hit.
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