Road kill Friday

Statistics on USA road kill:

1) 4 million Miles of roads in the United States.

2) 226 million Number of vehicles registered in the United States.

3) 23 trillion Vehicle miles traveled in the United States in 2002

4) 6.3 million Number of automobile accidents annually in the United States

5) 253,000 Number of animal-vehicle accidents annually

6) 50 Estimated percentage of vehicle-large animal collisions that go unreported.

7) 90 Percentage of animal-vehicle collisions that involve deer

8) $2,000 Average minimum cost for repairing a vehicle after a collision with a deer

9) 1 million Number of vertebrates run over each day in the United States (a rate of one every 11.5 seconds).

10) 200 Number of human deaths annually resulting from vehicle-wildlife collisions.

Take note of item 10 –  if you do not feel that the deaths of millions of non-human animals is reason to stop the road kill.

I’m not going to post pictures any more of the killed mammals and reptiles, theuy are too upsetting. Imagine how upsetting pictures of mangled people would be.

Why am I doing the road kill friday reports? I started off doing this because there is some “gallows humor” around this topic that is very funny.

But the more I learn, I find that this has evolved, for me, into a desire to get drivers to stop the massacre; I guess if I had thought about it much, I did not think that there were so many animal deaths.

This weeks personal Whatcom County roadkill report:

• Birds – 2
• Duck – 1
• Squirrels – 4
• Unidentified – 4
• Opossums – 2
• Mouse – 1

Quotes from Buzz.com:

“Sarcasm helps keep you from telling people what you really think of them.”

“Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.”

“The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of the oncoming train.”

The light at the end of the tunnel

“People who think they know what they’re doing are especially annoying to those of us who do.”

“I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.”

Hamster report