Please Proceed with Caution: The Animals Are at It Again

It’s springtime, which means for many wildlife, it’s their active season. It makes sense: days get longer and warmer, so food supplies begin to return and become more and more plentiful. The birds sing to get each other’s attention. Peeper frogs start peeping. Some creatures are reinvigorated after a listless winter. Our fearless groundhog Punxsutawney Phil’s appearance out of hibernation can herald an early spring (or not).

Spring is the time when many wild animals are mating. Unlike their label, when it comes to procreation, wildlife is far less wild than humans. Many of the more common North American species of wildlife mate only once or twice a year, spring being the most popular time: insects, birds, amphibians, sea and pond creatures, rabbits, squirrels, black bear, and other mammals. Still other mammals like fox, deer, elk, moose, coyote, and wolves mate in the fall specifically so that their young are born in the spring when their food supplies become available.

For those of us who live anywhere outside of the concrete jungle of a city, spring is a time to be mindful of the animals’ folly. I say “folly” tongue in cheek because their springtime procreation is truly evermore a real act of their species’ survival. As we humans turn more and more natural land into neighborhoods, office complexes, and shopping centers, not only do we encroach upon the space this wildlife has occupied for centuries and even millennia, but we also bring our additional deadly force upon them in the form of our cars.

All too often and more and more so, I see dead animals alongside or in the middle of the road. Yes, some of these collisions are unavoidable, but I wonder, If all these dead animals were dead children, would everyone be so unmoved by these killings?

If all these dead animals were dead children, would everyone be so unmoved by these killings?         

This comparison may sound shocking or extreme, but I feel that too many of us have become numb to our wildlife at the very time that we should be paying even more attention to them. Why should a human child be more important than another living creature? I would like to think that most drivers don’t go out of their way to hit animals in the path of their car, but are all of us doing enough to reduce animal road-crossing fatalities?

I have been running a little driving experiment of my own lately, particularly on my local secondary and tertiary roads. These are oftentimes two-way, double yellow-lined roads with a single lane in each direction. I use my cruise control to set my car to the speed limit, or no more than five miles per hour over that limit. Even at low traffic times of day, I often find a line of cars building up behind me. Everyone’s in such a hurry. We’re just used to driving our modern, smooth handling cars pretty darn fast.

The problem, however, is that it’s not our cars for which these speed limits were put in place. Speed limits are developed based on the context of all the factors of that area: residential areas with small children, joggers, cyclists, and yes, wild animals. Plain and simple, if you actually drive the speed limit, you decrease the chance that you will hit anything moving with unpredictability, including an animal darting out into the road. You will have enough time to slow down or the animal will have more of an opportunity to avoid you using its own momentum.

If you just cannot imagine yourself abiding by your local speed limits but you do want to help improve the wildlife’s chances of survival especially during springtime, please consider these few things when you’re behind the wheel of your car:

• Be especially diligent during dawn and dusk hours. It’s when the animals are the most active and the light is poor.
• Scan the approaching roadside fringes. Through practice, the diligent eye can be trained to notice movement which can clue you in to slow down. At night, animal eyes will reflect your car’s headlights. If you see a pair of beady-looking eyes ahead, be ready to brake.
• Imagine your beloved pet. Pet ownership in the U.S. has jumped significantly over the past three decades. As of 2024, 66% of U.S. households (86.9 million homes) own a pet. What if the animal that darted into the road was your pet? Or your best friend’s pet? Do animals in the wild deserve any less consideration just because they’re not someone’s pet? In my opinion, if anything, they deserve even more consideration because they do not get the benefit of a luxurious life of at-the-ready food and shelter.

We Homo sapiens have been on the planet for only about 5 million years. Today’s wildlife, trying to co-exist in their shrinking spaces and alongside us, have been living here far, far much longer. They deserve our attention and respect. North America's common roadkill today include:

• Foxes, which first appeared in North America around 9 million years ago;
• Squirrels, which have been in North America for 23 million years;
• Raccoons, which have been around for about 40 million years;
• Opossums, which have been here for 55 million years, with its forebearers “first appearing on the continent about 65 million years ago, at the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which killed the dinosaurs.”;
• Ancient groundhogs (woodchucks) date back as far as 66-70 million years ago. Give Punxsutawney Phil and his cousins some props for surviving that long!

This is all to say that these animals were used to living on our continent for MILLIONS of years before the last one hundred years, when we humans introduced the automobile. And think about how much our roads and cars have evolved from crank engines that went about 30 MPH max back then to our superhighways with cars that can easily exceed 75 MPH without even feeling it.

Of course, we hope or expect animals to evolve and adapt to the world we’ve created…and many are! All you have to do is witness a squirrel that darts out into a road only to sense oncoming traffic and bolt back into the safety of the road’s side to know that they’re learning. Evolution and adaptation doesn’t necessarily happen quickly in general, however, let alone for million-year-old species.

So at the very least, while they’re mating and doing their best to reproduce and raise their offspring this season, can we please cut them a little slack and do our best to pay closer attention and slow down?

This nature lover thanks you.

Photo credits, from top left: Raccoon - Bernell on Pixabay; Squirrel - 14398 on Pixabay; Skunk - Mike on Pixabay; White-Tailed Deer - Reid Sullivan on WikiMedia; Fox - Kgbo on on WikiMedia; Opossum - Thomas R Machnitzki on WikiMedia