Roadkill Goes Green

Nearby my house, the frontage road feeding traffic into the highway is actually more elevated than the highway itself, which means the frontage road slopes downward. This evening, my fiancé and I had just entered the frontage road in his car; he was driving. He suddenly said, "Did they just steal that tree?" I looked left through his driver's side window and saw a black pick-up truck. It had just driven off the grassy median between the frontage road and the highway and had entered the right lane of traffic — with a tree on top of it. The tree must have been close to 20 feet long. The truck of the tree wasn't very thick — maybe less than a foot — but the tree was long enough to span the length of the truck, from the hood to the back.

At first glance, we thought the tree was tied on top of the truck as cargo. We quickly realized, after seeing damage on the truck's front bumper, that the driver hadn't stolen the tree. He had hit it.

A second later, the truck veered toward the frontage road, its wheels hitting the side of the median, and the tree slid off the top of the truck and directly into our path. My fiancé braked, as the truck sped off down the highway. We manuvered around the tree and entered the right lane. We immediately saw the truck's black bumper, which had just fallen off and was rolling around in the middle of the highway. Up ahead, we could see smoke billowing from the truck as it sped out of our sight.