On a recent family excursion to Hogle Zoo, I caught sight of a fawn that had wandered from the direction of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. The sounds of nearby car doors might have spooked it, so instead of heading back into the foothills, it sprang across the parking lot of This Is the Place Heritage Park and took refuge under a tree.
We wondered what could be done to usher it back into the hills and after some abortive attempts to do so, we decided to leave well enough alone. We hoped that the fawn would be safe from the cars on Sunnyside Avenue, but I have no idea what happened to that beautiful creature. For its sake, I hope it found its way back home.
Sadly, many animals don't have the open-ended prospects that this fawn had when finding themselves beside our roads and highways. How many times do we drive by the bodies of deer, raccoons, dogs or cats as we hurry on our way?
Utah's roads bring an unceremonious demise to many of our animal neighbors, and it does influence us as human beings. We can stand to be more mindful of this in our travels and in our infrastructure.
Indeed, we have become so accustomed to such a phenomenon that living creatures—whose record of habitation upon this land at the very least exceeds our own—become mere things ("roadkill") when they happen to get stuck upon our rivers of cement and asphalt. It is a heartbreaking sight each time I come upon it.
I am grateful for the efforts of groups like the Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative in their work to establish bridges and culverts for safe animal crossings. Such labors are both a needed and humane action to take, a recognition that we do not own everything that exists, and that the boundaries between human communities and the wild needn't be thoughtlessly enforced in death and disposal.
This is not a trivial matter. Our stubborn refusal to acknowledge any faults in our accepted means of travel does indeed play a part in our ongoing environmental crises. Similarly, our acquiescence and proximity to "acceptable" deaths in transit encourages a rather callous view of life, placing our own convenience and timetables ahead of all other concerns.
What happens to one will ripple to others both in health as well as soul, and no car can shield us from that seemingly banal kind of damage.
"I'll not hurt thee," says Uncle Toby to the fly in Tristram Shandy. "Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me."
Small Lake City is home to local writers and their opinions.
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