While driving the 2 1/2 hours to and from Winona (twice) last week, I noticed my fair share of roadkill. Yes, I notice it. It's there on the side of the road, an odd mass of fur, bones and even innards sometimes and I'm always curious as to what it is. In my drivings I saw raccoon, squirrel, bird, what I think was a possum, deer and skunk. One skunk carcass in particular had so many flies buzzing around it that I actually swerved the car a bit to avoid it even though it was on the side.
The skunk carcasses got me wondering: Do birds, particularly carrion birds, have a sense of smell? I mean you would think that having to find sustenance like seeds, berries, or even bodies, they would require the schnoz sense. Also, do skunk smell worse than the standard rotting corpse on the road side? I mean, sure as a human driver I can certainly tell when a skunk or skunk body is around and has recently expelled it's scent. But do the birds notice/ mind?
Yep, driving through bumblefuknowhere Minnesota leaves lots of time to think and wonder.
On a plus side, in the midst of the many farms we passed, each with either cows or horses, totally spotted a llama farm! I squeed like a little girl :)
Maybe they can smell, but it smells nummy to them, like it smells like yummy brownies freshly baked in to oven. While to us it smells like nasty road killed skunk and puke.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...that is an interesting idea, I didn't think of that.
ReplyDeleteWhere we would go, "MMM brownies!" the bird is going "MMM carcass!"
I could see that.