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Beautiful Roadkill

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/CMS%20061411.mp3

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Chion%20Roadkill%20Song.mp3

It starts with two raccoons "sprawled still as stones in the road." 

"I carry them to the side and lay them in sun-shot, windblown grass in the barrow ditch." Then it's jackrabbits and a "crumpled adolescent porcupine" who "leers up almost maniacally over its blood-flecked teeth."  
 
"I carry each one away from the tarmac and into a cover of brush or grass out of decency, I think. And worry. Who are these animals, their lights gone out. What journeys have fallen apart here?"
 
So begins "Apologia," Barry Lopez's haunting and famous essay about driving across the roads of America and stopping to lift and move and apologize to roadkill. 
 
We started thinking about roadkill last week after producer Patrck Skahill saw a massacre of geese on Rt. 4 in West Hartford.
 
The more we looked at it, the more we saw our own studied, hardened unawareness of a giant drama.
 
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
 
***This episode originally aired on June 14th, 2011.***

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Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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