Finding Flattened Fauna | saw the two vultures ahead of me along Maypul Layne Road long before | could see what had attracted them. As | drew nearer, | could see their attention was fixated on a rac- coon carcass. The flattened corpse was well beyond its best before date and more closely resembled a furry sheet of card- board now, but the vultures still were finding a few tasty mor- sels. Today's column is about animals which, like the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz, are not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. It is about the ironed-out specimens we see every day commonly referred to as road kills, many of which meet their fate on high-speed highways like the 401. The South Marysburgh Mirror the carcass is buried, these grave diggers lay their eggs on it, the carcass serving as a larder for their larvae. Certainly, a discussion on decaying road kills is not a pleas- ant topic, but it is a fact of life. Few people, | dare guess, stop to think about the valuable service performed by the birds, mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria in cleaning up roadside kills. Even large animals like deer are processed by the scaven- gers in as little as two years - bones, hide and all. Were it not for this natural clean-up brigade, town and county mainte- nance crews would be faced with staggering costs in highway clean-up. And we thought dead roadside animals simply evap- orated into thin air over time! With the abundance of dead raccoons that | see along the roadsides every year, | sometimes wonder how it manages to survive as a species at all. When the cement barriers were in- stalled in the 401 median there was instant concern about ani- mals no longer being able to navigate back and forth across 401. One official wryly commented that deer would have no problem leaping over the barrier; for the smaller animals though, they would never make it as far as the barrier for it to be an issue! How many of us stop to think about the processes which take place with a carcass before it is reduced to a patch of hair and a grease mark on the asphalt? However, none of the remains of the thousands of animals killed by automobiles each day ever goes to waste. Crows, vultures and other scavengers feast on the carcass, sometimes they, too, becoming casualties as they feed, oblivious to traffic barrelling down on them. Mice may visit later to chew on the bones for the calcium they contain. Any remaining hide might be consumed by smaller mammals and a multitude of insects, and finally, by fungi and other organisms. Songbirds may even utilize the fur as nesting material. Among the first insects to visit roadside kills are the flesh flies, followed by blowflies, the fly maggots later having their turn at the remains. Ants, daddy longlegs, yellow jackets and wasps all display interest in the car- cass. Later arrivals of the clean-up brigade might in- clude beetles and other types of flies. When nothing but bones, dry skin and cartilage is left, more beetles will arrive, along with snails, centipedes and millipedes. Turkey vultures are among our most efficient scavengers. While somewhat unattractive in appearance and totally dis- gusting in their table manners, their value as scavengers can- not be overlooked. Imagine, if you will, the incredible stench resulting from over a million animals killed each day on our highways if scavengers such as turkey vultures were not around. And imagine our forests knee deep in rotting carcass- es and excrement were it not for the natural processes at work? One of the most interesting and unusual of the scavengers are the burying beetles. These industrious little insects will bury a carcass by removing the earth from beneath it. Once These Turkey Vultures along Long Point Road are waiting for a road kill. - Photo by Terry Sprague Time will tell if the burgeoning highway traffic results in a marked decline of some species. For now, the wildlife clean-up brigade members are capitalizing on the windfall. The raccoon carcass | came across earlier this spring is likely no more than a memory by now. Nothing in nature goes to waste. Terry Sprague is a County field naturalist who lives on Big Island. His website on nature in the county can be found at and he can be reached at Terry and Christie—