A couple of months ago there was a thread here about weird stuff found on the side of the road. Please forgive me for exhuming it and adding my own at this late date.
My neighbors and I are fortunate enough to have a National Forest for a backyard. It is roughly 200,000 mountainous square acres of pine and juniper, fields, rivers and streams, crisscrossed with fire access roads and deer trails.
One day we were walking our dogs, miles away from any human habitation, when we chanced upon a fully roasted chicken lying on the side of the path.
Our bemusement gave rise to a number of inventive explanations. Trebuchet launchings in the deep, deep woods? Not likely, a dense forest does not lend itself to that type of experiment. Spillage from a picnic basket? Then where are the baked beans and potato salad? Perhaps it was set out as poison for the coyote which abound in this area. Logical, but one of our dogs managed to grab a bite or two, and even days later was still in good health.
No, we were left with only the mundane, rational explanation - one tempetuous, stormy night some poor hen had wandered off from a local farm and was struck by lightning … and garlic.
The rosemary and sage flavored stuffing remains a mystery.
Once was picking up trash for one of those volunteer 1 mile stretches on the highway.
There was the standard stuff except for one area about 50 feet off the road that had a 6 foot pile of Christmas tree ornaments, lights, etc. that looked brand new.
That was strange enough except right behind the pile was a HUGH stack of spent SHOT GUN SHELLS! Like hundreds of 'em everywhere. Only thing we could figure out was that someone put the ornaments in front of the shells to hide them.
No, we didn’t pick up the shells. Just the ornaments.
Once my family and I took our two chihuahas for a short walk in the Angeles National Forest, right off the highway. At one point, the chihuahuas stopped abruptly, their hackles raised all over their backs, and stretched their necks forward, sniffing. We suddenly realized that there was a dead doe right next to the trail, unnoticed up until now because she was the same color as the brush. She had been shot, and couldn’t have been dead more than a few minutes, because she was still warm, and her blood was bright red and uncoagulated. Had the fat little house chihuahas not gone into a “point”, we would have never noticed her because of her excellent camouflage coloring. We saw no other cars or people around, so who knows where or how she had been (illegally) shot.
For the last 3 weeks I have passed on my way home from work an abandoned boat on a trailer on the side of the freeway
When I first saw it I thought maybe the trailer had a flat and they dropped it to go and get the tire fixed but no it is still there 3 weeks later. It is now covered in snow. I don’t understand why the police have not had it towed away. It is quite a mystery, really.
I once saw a dead coyote by the side of the road in Kentucky (my sister and I were playing “Name That Roadkill.”) My mother once saw a woman burning a trash pile in a rainstorm by the highway.
Back in 1985 someone found a land mine along Interstate 25. Luckily the bomb squad got there before it went off.
When I was at college, one night we were driving around in the industrial area down near the Swannanoa River in Asheville. I don’t remember why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We found a 7-foot high Snoopy head made of chicken wire, papier mache, and fringy crepe paper. It was clearly something made for a parade float, there was no other possibility.
Being college students, we strapped it to the top of the car and drove around with it for awhile.
M
Years ago, I and my coworkers were performing an Earth Day clean up of the side of the road leading into town. To one side of the road was a park/small nature preserve. After we were heading back to work two of my coworkers said they had been cleaning trash up slightly into the park area and they found a pair of jeans. They were apparently a teenage girl’s pants because they were small and had a bunch of drawings on them in magic marker. They were laid out neatly and next to them was a can of huffing material with instructions on how to use it as such. My coworkers speculated that the girl huffed the stuff and immediately disappeared, leaving nothing but the pants neatly laid out there.
My previous home was in a very rural and hilly area. Across the road from our driveway was a gate into the neighbor’s pasture. It was set back from the road a bit, forming a turnout in front of it. Some inconsiderate jackass dumped a camper shell there. It clearly hadn’t fallen off the back of a truck–it was removed and set there.
A friend popped by the house and the two of us were talking about it. I was fuming. Just then, somebody pulled into my driveway and asked if the camper shell across the street was for sale. I collected $20, helped him put it on the back of his truck, and laughed the rest of the afternoon.
Last Spring, taking a short cut home on an unused back road. We knew we were the first ones because the snow was untouched and had to stop several times to cut fallen trees from across the roadway. When we got to a very large tree that has been spared because of its huge size right off the road, I spied what appeared to be a bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic. Stopped and sure enough, that’s what they were and they were FRESH! I wonder to this day how those flowers got there. They couldn’t have been more than hours old and there were clearly no tracks in the soft snow of any kind.
Another odd find a few years ago. Driving home on our rural dirt road, I passed a telephone box that looked like it had a human head on it. ERRT! Backed up and yep, wasn’t seeing things, it was a human head, fake, but human, with what appeared to be real hair and fresh, nicely applied makeup. Continued down the road laughing about our find and wondering if we were going to find the rest of the manikin further along. Nope, got to our field and off in the distance, out in the middle of the field, sitting on a fence post was the twin of the head we had in the vehicle.
All I could imagine them being were maniken heads, but I later listed one of them on E-bay and one of the folks who bid on it explained that it was a practice head for beauty salon students. That did explain why the hair was longer on one side and the make up.The other one’s still sitting on my shelf here…any one want a realistic looking head with two separate hairdo’s?
That is funny!
Sort of off the side of a road… in the backwater of a stream. 30 feet from the road. Submerged in the water. (In about 1974…) I found a 1908 Pennsylvania license plate. Number 4615. I swear to God.
I was riding down in the pine barrens of NJ, and while riding along the old, unused roadbed of a county highway, (the new highway was built to replace the old bridge) I spied a bright orange speedboat, seemingly pulled over on the left side of th road, with “Flynn” painted on it. The strange thing was that there were two dead, recently shot fawns (baby deer, not the fictional creature) in it. I mentioned it to local police, figuring it was a poaching thing, but they were remarkably uninterested.
Another ride in southern NJ was a bit more interesting. I was riding down to Bivalve, and Shellpile (Yes, there are some big piles of evil smelling shells in Shellpile, and the smell in Bivalve was hellacious), and on the way back, I followed an abandoned railroad bed. There were some cool abandoned loading platforms, along with some abandoned trash. In the distance, I saw what appeared to be a lumpy gray-brown carpet, and closer by I spotted a decaying deer. When I checked out the “carpet”, I found out that the large lumpy mass was actually a large collection of deer carcasses. Most everything was decomposed, and all that was left was fur and bones. I counted a total of about 17-19 heads. I went to the nearby State Trooper HQ, and mentioned it, and the guy at the counter was very appreciative, and both thanked me, and told me he would mention it to the local game warden. I figure someone was poaching, and decided to dump the evidence in a hurry. It was an easy place to find, and anyone with a car could’ve gotten there easily, as it was only about ¼ mile away from the highway.
On Rt 539 in NJ, there is a big rock that has been painted like an American Flag since 9-11-01. Previously, it changed from time to time. Near Speculator, NY, there is a rock outcropping shaped suspiciously like a pig’s head. Locals have painted it grey, with eyes to keep up the illusion.
Over on Bainbridge Island is Frog Rock. It’s a huge boulder that has been split in half horizontally by the elements. At least I think that’s what happened. Could be someone managed to hoist one rock on the other, but why go to the trouble? Anyway, someone keeps it painted to look like a frog. Green body with red lips where the crack is and big eyes. It’s quite the local attraction.
I used to live in a house at the foot of a steep mountain road without much traffic. Pickup trucks would head uphill, and any unsecured contents in the truck beds would just s-l-i-d-e on out and land in the driveway. It was a gold mine. We went out one morning, and there was a new upright vacuum cleaner standing in the driveway; looked up the road and there was a trail of them, three or four more, standing about thirty yards apart, lined up down the middle of the road like phone poles. Ladders, tool boxes, canoes, and furniture were also popular. We’d just leave the stuff sit by the side of the road and most of the time the trucks would return and the sheepish drivers would load up their stuff again and drive off slowly.
The best, though, was the hot summer day where I went down to get the paper and there, neatly deposited at the foot of the driveway, was a keg of beer and four Eskimo coolers full of food. No one ever came back for the stuff. We had a heck of a picnic the next day.
In the state of North Carolina, the police are notorious for not having abandoned vehicles towed in a timely manner. A completely burned-out car sat on the side of Wade Avenue (just before the Blue Ridge Road exit) in Raleigh for a month or more. It had been marked for towing, too, with a neon sticker on the back.
I once encountered a mattress in the middle of I-40 west. It was a relatively flat stretch with little traffic, so I saw the thing in time to easily avoid it.
