Bambi ripped to pieces on German roads - and nobody reported it

The police at the small rural station seem to know the blogster by now, if the friendly tone of voice of the early morning duty officer is any indication.

Plus, they received two calls this week during the commute in the hours before sunrise. Both calls followed the same pattern after the introduction.

Has anybody reported a dead deer on road xyz this morning?

No.

Okay, there is a dead deer on the road between A town and B town, in the lane towards A town,  about x hundred meters from....<and so forth>

The blogster figured that asking if somebody has already reported a mangled, bloody, disemboweled Bambi serves two purposes. First, it does not imply who ran over Bambi, second, it does give credit to other drivers who may have reported the hazard already.

But nobody did.

Why not, remains a mystery at a time when everyone has a cellphone, and with insurance companies requiring a police report before they pay for wildlife damage to a vehicle.

It may be a stretch, but we asked ourselves whether we are seeing a motor vehicle version of the birdstrike phenomenon described by airforce personnel: bird strikes are most frequently reported on the return leg of a jet and near its home base. The reason?
Protocol requires to land after a bird strike, and pilots don't want to have to go down halfway across the country, so they phone it in a few miles from home if they can.

Judging by the mess and the visible results of the physics of impact, this week's deer victims of technology were likely hit by a pickup or a larger truck. These deer fatalities occurred on two of the larger roads, not on some winding one-lane country road where you cannot safely go more than 25 mph even during the day.

Commute traffic in hill country is fast and hazardous during roadkill season, with anywhere between 10 and 20 collisions per week between motor vehicles and deer or wild boar reported in the local paper. No one counts the smaller animals, the rabbits, hedgehogs, martens, or foxes you may see playing or foraging near the road one day and as a lifeless lump on the blacktop the next day.