My dad as driving home from work and found a toy stuffed animal alligator. He stopped and picked it up. We just put it in the washer a few times and it came out good as new. Its about 3 feet long. I wonder if its related to William’s alligator?
“I had a hammer”, OR “How I almost got shot by a PA State trooper.”
While in college I worked summers at a phonebook bindery. I also owned an old dodge pickup, with a non-functional gas gauge. From time to time I would run out of gas. This particular time, it happened on Interstate 81, about a mile from the nearest exit, after a grueling day in the 100-degree plus bindery. So, I dirty, poorly dressed and sweaty, and have no gas.
So, I start walking back to the exit. Unbeknownst to me, a passerby called the state cops. On my way to the exit, I found a perfectly good roofing hammer, and naturally took it with me. Shortly thereafter, I hear a car pull off behind me, a short blare of siren. I turn around and start walking towards the cruiser.
The cop gets on his bullhorn and says, “SIR, PLEASE DROP THE HAMMER”
I do so, extending my arms, open palmed towards the cop, and approach the cruiser.
We talk about my predicament, and he agrees to drive me to the nearest gas station. But before letting me in the car he asks. “Sir, do you have any weapons?”
To which I reply, “Well, I had a hammer.”
He let me bring it too, and it lives in my toolbox to this day.
This sure is a interesting thread. Half of you are talking about seeing corpses and the other half talk about finding toys, and stuffed animals. 
The weirdest thing I ever found on the road was a baby sleeper complete with blankets in the middle of the road. It was pretty foggy, and a little bit strange.
Cows.
Yep. An entire herd of cows. Walking along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the middle of the night. Dad had to play “thread the needle” just to get through them without getting hamburger all over the car.
I saw a bull that had gotten out of its enclosure standing in the far right hand lane of traffic on a very busy road in Davie, Florida.
A large duffel bag on the ground near my friends house, which happens to be very close to the Medical Examiners office. We found out later on the news that the duffel bag contained the dead body of an unidentified woman. (There have been several other bodies discovered locally in luggage dumped on the roadsides since then.)
On a long, lonely stretch of road appropriately called “Alligator Alley” I have seen… alligators of various sizes sunning themselves.
-Also cows. Lots of cows. Worse yet, this was on the Alpenpass, a road that connects Germany and Austria by GOING OVER A FREAKIN MOUNTAIN. One lane, one direction, 25% grade or so (upslope), me in a beat-up stickshift Opel stationwagon, and a whole herd of cows blocking the way.
-Same road, downslope. A BMW motorcycle with 30 feet of skid marks behind it, and cops in front of it…On the guard rail was the helmet. On the ground was the motorcyclist, headless.
-Many miles and years later, I found a digital tapemeasure on the side of Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh. I didn’t keep the cows, the motorcycle, the headless cyclist, or the Opel, for that matter, but I have the tapemeasure in my apartment.
Wow, how timely.
Just this morning I found a pair of brand new Felco pruning shears. They run about $40.00 new.
Being an arborist, this was a VERY exciting find!
I once found a rattlesnake so large it stopped the car. It was stretched out on the road and actually stopped the tires from moving.
I also save turtles.
And any other hurt-but-still-alive animals.
I didn’t exactly find this in the road, but…
My friend and I were driving to the nearby ‘big’ town of Woodward, Oklahoma to pick up our tuxes for the prom. (The farm town I lived in had a population of about 1200, and you sure as hell couldn’t rent a tux there.) Anyway, we’re cruising along about 70 or 80 in his tiny MG, when we come up on a pickup pulling a cattle trailer. Right when we get behind it, the gate opens on the cattle trailer and we get to witness a cow who decides she’d rather not be in the trailer anymore! Once the cow puts her first hoof on the highway doing about 70, she decides this isn’t so great afterall! Ahh, but it’s too late. She falls out of the trailer, and skids around on her ass, before jumping up and running into the ditch. Meanwhile, we missed hitting her by a few feet. We were getting ready to pass the pickup when this happened, and were right on it’s ass. Four lane roads don’t exactly exist in that part of the state.
Me too!
My dad is King of the Junk Collectors. He picked up a “perfectly good” flannel shirt off the road somewhere, washed it a couple times and next time I was over, said “You want this? It might fit.” It fit. Was that nice worn-in flannel, not too heavy, not too light. Didn’t find out until later (although I should’ve guessed!) that he’d picked it up out of the freakin’ road.
A cherry tomato. Walking down the street one day, and there it is, right in the middle of the street. It didn’t even look like it had gone bad, either. So I kicked it a couple of times, it ended up on someone’s lawn, and I kept walking.
I also once found an ace of spades. Walking through town after going to the bars, it’s about 4am (we took our time and it was a 45 min walk anyways), and we stop at a stop sign (we were drunk - following the rules of the road made sense at the time!), and in front of my feet is an ace of spades. I still have it.
I also have a picture of someone taken with a Polaroid camera. I have no idea who it is, or how it ended up on the side of the road of some backroad in the country, but there it was, and I still have it. I’m tempted to make a website saying “Wanted: Information Regarding the Whereabouts of This Man”.
And then there was Jim. It’s not really a something found, but I hadn’t seen him in a while, and one day driving home through a part of town that I always drive through, I saw him walking down the street. I thought that was pretty cool. Haven’t seen him since, though.
I drive from Providence to New York City (about 200 miles each way) at least once a month, and I’ve seen many strange things.
Since I make that trip so often, I had started looking for things to do to keep myself entertained while driving. I discovered audio books were a nice alternative to music.
One night I was listening to Stephen King’s Blood and Smoke, which is three short stories read by King. Very cool.
Anyway, one of the stories on the tape is called ‘Room 1408’ and it is about a haunted hotel room and very, very creepy. I had managed to get a good scare going, and I’m sure being alone in a car on a nearly empty highway at night didn’t help.
Just as the story ended, I came up on some traffic. I couldn’t see what the problem was because there was a curve in the road. Traffic wasn’t at a dead stop, but I was barely moving. I smelled smoke and figured it was an accident or something. As I came around the curve, I saw what the hold up was.
There was a Jeep Cherokee in the breakdown lane completely engulfed in flames. I had never seen anything like it before. Even the hood was on fire…angry orange flames, pieces of fire just dripping off and burning on the ground. The strange thing was that there were no cops or ambulances there yet, it must have just happened. Now, no one wants to drive next to that, so all the cars were squeezing over to the left lane, and no one was being courteous because we all must have had the same vision of it exploding and killing us. I just wanted to get out of there, but there was no where to go. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I got past. Just as I was diving away, I heard sirens coming.
I was so spooked by the whole thing I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Rose
I didn’t really “find it” in the highway but…
One time I saw a couple screwing in a white vw jetta while driving down the highway… I was going to match speed and watch for a while(hey, they were showing it off…) but I started having visions of him losing control and smashing into my car so I decided better.