This week at Shangrilogs - May 31

True crime comes a little too close.

I don’t typically send a free preview of paid content (don’t want to spam you with emails you can’t read) but thought you might find this slice of small town interesting. If you like a smaller dose of weird, consider going paid. If not, delete this edition and carry on, good and slow.

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This is an email I received from the Town Manager this week:

This morning a number of folks saw the female deer carcass that was strewn on the road about halfway between Town and the highway. It was suspicious, so I reported it the Department of Wildlife, which in turn sent a DOW officer to investigate- here's what he said: He thinks that the female deer was hit by a westbound large vehicle going fast- the initial collision killed the deer and the twin fawns she was on the verge of giving birth to. Then someone removed the two hindquarters and the two backstraps (loins), before finally cutting off the legs and head and leaving those parts further down the road. The officer said whoever did this can have the meat, but needs to request a roadkill permit, either from the SMSO or the DOW. Failure to do this within 24 hours means that after that period, someone is illegally in possession of wildlife parts.

Speeding complaints in town are on the seasonal rise. My observation is that the vast majority of speeders are residents, and I'm at a loss how to slow them down. The Town does not have 1) any enforcement mechanism nor 2) a Town Court. We will be doing spring maintenance to Town streets in the coming week, including re-grading, mag chloride on the main road and cutting speed dips at various locations. Once that's done I'll follow up with summer signage. Only one garbage can planter survived last summer, and I'm not sure it's worth replacing them. 

First, let’s address how deeply weird this is. It’s one thing to salvage roadkill meat, it’s another to cut off the legs and head and leave them scattered along the center of the road. I’m not interested in taking this newsletter down the true crime route, so let’s ease off on the True Detective shit.

Second, this is deeply depressing. Speeding on our road has not only killed wildlife like this, but it’s killed people’s pets. The whole road is only 2.5 miles long before you’re on pavement. It’s not like this is a 30 minute drive over an ATV road. It’s a short dirt road, and people are like “ah yes, I’d love to get rid of the obscenely charming flower bins I can’t stop hitting and murder some animals while I’m at it just so I can go 40 instead of 25 for six minutes.” 

That the town manager has noticed it’s typically locals speeding is even worse. The town is built on old tailings fields, and many residents suspect the toxic dust has a correlation to cancer in the town. If you go the speed limit, the dust is heavily mitigated.

It’s disheartening to me that even in this tiny community, people cannot escape the siren call of speed, convenience, and inherent selfishness. And of course people make mistakes. People zone out. I have. We were driving Cooper to the vet the other day and Ben asked why I was going 15 in the 10 through town. “I’m thinking about him dying,” I said as I pressed the brake.

There is a massive blood splotch on the dirt where the deer was left skinned with her now dead fawns inside her. I’m not religious but I couldn’t help doing the Hail Mary as we drove over it. We’ll see many more deaths on the road this year: rabbits, marmots, porcupines, and the like. The coyotes seem smarter. The lynx and bobcats and mountain lions stay high. The elk don’t come here anymore.

But if you cannot convince 180 nature-loving people to slow down, who can you?