Before my wife and I were married, we used to play a game on long car journeys called Dead Animal. The rules were few: when you saw a dead animal in the road, you shouted “Dead animal!” very loudly. The only object was to be first.
It could be pretty nerve racking for the driver if there were three or more players, and terrifying for a passenger if the driver got too involved. Apart from its grisliness, the game’s main feature was its generous stupidity. You didn’t even have to identify the expired animal in question, which might have taken some of the fun out of it.
Sadly, roadkill identification appears to be someone’s job. According to recently updated figures, the last 16 months have seen 2,213 reported dead animals on English highways. Figures for last year included 10 polecats, 36 swans, three ferrets, a pig and a wallaby.
This tragic tally was obtained through a freedom of information request, and the resulting spreadsheet looks like a scorecard from a more sophisticated version of Dead Animal: species on the X axis, roads on the Y. That wallaby was killed on an unspecified bit of the M1, but it turns out there’s a substantial population in Bedfordshire. Eighty-five animals were deemed too squished to identify.
It’s hard to tell, relatively speaking, whether this is good news or bad news: we can be thankful there were no llamas on the list, but 534 badgers and 611 deer does sound like an awful lot. And these are just the roadkill Highways England was called upon to deal with. It’s a safe bet the real number is higher.
It is clear from the findings, however, that there are some real hotspots, the main one being the south west. The A303 alone accounted for almost 20% of all roadkill. When you combine its 425 fatalities with those from three other roads – the A35, the A38 and the A419 – it adds up to more than a third of the total. This makes me think there might be some targeted solution that could make a difference. Maybe we could build a big, beautiful wall, and make the animals pay for it.
Splats entertainment
I stopped playing Dead Animal a long time ago, but if you were looking for a slightly more ethical alternative you can become a participant in Project Splatter, a “citizen science project that collates UK wildlife road casualty data using social media”, based at Cardiff University. If spotting roadkill and sending the date and location to a Twitter account (@ProjectSplatter) sounds like your idea of giving something back, then this initiative is for you. And even if you’re doing it for kicks, you’re still helping.
Just don’t go looking to Project Splatter for good news. Last week the researchers received 500 roadkill reports, including two hares, four buzzards and one “unidentified feathered object”.
Ghosts in the machines
Channel 4’s new plan to screen personalised adverts tailored to specific viewers, by name, is bad news for those of us who are easily spooked by machines pretending to know us. I hate Siri. I once got freaked out because a supermarket checkout machine appeared to know my birthday, but it was just flashing that day’s date, and it happened to be my birthday. I jumped out of my chair the first time Facebook’s chat facility popped up of its own accord and said “How’s it going?” (it was my sister). The notion that a Foster’s ad might suddenly start addressing me directly fills me with nothing but alarm. I’m paranoid enough, thanks.
True, this personalisation is only for subscribers to Channel 4’s catch-up service, and only if they opt in, but it still strikes me as being altogether undesirable. I never lose sleep worrying about GCHQ knowing how many Nectar card points I have, but if my TV tries to start a conversation with me, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear.
