Wednesday, October 15, 2014

What I Found On Today’s Run

Today on my run I found a parakeet.  It looked exactly like this, but I didn’t have my camera so Google images had to do. Cute little feller, no?

It was on the sidewalk and I almost smashed it with my Asics. It flew into a tree. I spent more time than I care to mention trying to coax it out of the tree. I am not sure what I would done if it came to me because I really don’t like birds. Maybe I could have had it for dinner with a side or orzo.

After all was said and done, I left it there. I came home and wondered if I was supposed to call the humane society or animal control in these instances. I mean it is a bird and by the time anyone showed up it would be in Atlanta. So, I did nothing. Pointless story.

This did get me to thinking about all of the weird shit I see when I run. When you drive and bike you miss a lot – but running? You see it all up close, especially if you don’t run that fast. And, I usually don’t.

Some of my best finds (I swear I don’t live on the wrong side of the tracks):

  • Used condom
  • Deer carcass eaten by coyotes
  • Ten million empty airplane sized liquor bottles (must be teens getting rid of evidence. Or a pilot getting rid of evidence)
  • A moose
  • Syringe
  • Starbucks gift card (empty)
  • Lottery ticket (not a winner)
  • Half smoked joint (this is Colorado)
  • Human feces (okay, well it looked like it. Guess it could have been a St. Bernard)
  • Bear feces (I know this because it had berries in it)
  • Underwear (this always confuses me. I am unsure how under garments get left on the side of the road unless someone is again getting rid of evidence? Ewww).
  • Vomit

I am leaving for the Runner’s World Half (Hat Trick) in the morning – flying Denver to Philly. I was thrilled to watch CNN today and learn that a health care worker with Ebola flew on a Frontier flight this week. I am once again reminded to not lick my tray table or make out with strangers sitting beside me.

 

What’s the most random thing you’ve ever found on a run? Parakeet.

Is Ebola freaking you out? I’m not panicking, but everyday I get a bit more uneasy.

SUAR

42 comments:

  1. I, too, have seen a used condom. The thought that went through my mind? Well at least SOMEONE was having fun recently. ;-)

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  2. Not a running find but I found a table on the side of the road while walking the dog. I wrestled it home, repainted it and it's now in our garden.
    Here's quite an interesting article I found on a blog: http://beerbellyrunning.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=14

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  3. A dead body!! I was not the first one to encounter it, but as I was running through the very lovely canals in Venice, the police/detectives were there in the knee-deep water checking out the floating corpse.

    To my releif(?) the word filtering through the crowd of lookie-loos was that he had fallen in drunk & drowned. No foul play.

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  4. Oh I love noticing what is lying on the side of the road. I once found a note that said God cares. Seriously. I am not a religious person but I did think that was pretty neat. Found $10 once. Oh! The weirdest thing had to be the time when I came upon 3 different packages of steaks within a half mile stretch. I live in the country so I thought this was really odd. I guess it puts a whole new twist on road kill. I am not that freaked out about ebola. I feel badly for those nurses though, I am a RN so I really think they may have gotten the short stick on this one, I get the impression the hospital may not have had it 's act together... I think the press needs to calm the f#$% down.

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  5. I found a toy truck on the side of the road. You think "no big deal", but I was running through a swamp with nothing but geese, deer and raccoon within at least a mile. Stranger yet, the next day it was re-positioned into an "I'm going to 4-wheel up this rock" position.....

    I've also seen random articles of clothing, multiple bungee cords, a condom, lotto tickets, too many beer cans (Coors seems to be the litterbugs choice) and what I think was mass frog suicide- hundreds of smashed frog carcasses over about a .5 mile stretch of road.

    And one time there was a deer that had been hit by a car and left to die flailing in the middle of the road. By the time I got to it, it had died. Good thing since I'm not real sure what I would have done. A kind motorist pulled over and helped me to move it off of the road.

    And I've seen human poop, not on the side of a road, but at a trail head. My husband and I were trying to figure out what type of animal it could be (due to some corn, we thought maybe deer????) then realized that no deer uses toilet paper! Ewwww.

    Sorry about the grossness.

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  6. I've seen some of these and left others though I'll never tell. I've seen a flattened, dead duck. Very disconcerting. Also: $5, random toys and shoes. Who loses just one shoe?

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  7. I'm relatively new to running so my list is short: used condom, full pack of cigarettes, a pair of safety glasses, one glove, and numerous species of road kill (country roads in Wisconsin--it's kinda the norm).

    Not completely freaked out by Ebola yet...but my husband is traveling next week so I may banish him to the basement for a week when he gets back and make him phone me with results of twice daily temperature readings ;)

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  8. I'm used to roadkill by now, but for some reason the urine filled Dasani water bottle that lingered on the shoulder of the road for what seemed like the entire summer really, truly grossed me out. Probably the most unexpected thing I've ever seen was a crayfish who obviously had some delusions of grandeur, and ran straight towards me with his little claws snapping. I'm embarrassed to say that yes, I did scream and run away at a high speed....

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  9. I was happy the day I found $3 in the middle of the road. One day in South Carolina I shooed a turtle off the road.

    I too thought about making my husband sleep in the basement after a trip. For now I keep reminding him to wash his hands and made sure we have a full jug of bleach and a full tank of propane on hand. It's my way of being prepared.

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  10. I wonder how underwear gets left on the side of the road too!! Those and socks. I change my socks in the comfort of my own home, or at the gym - so how do other people's make it outside by themselves?
    I came across a condom too one time, it was at the beach. Ewww.

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  11. I also saw human turds on the run last week. It was on a public sidewalk in a park, so that was especially nasty.

    My best one was from last month - I was about 5 miles away from my (suburban) home. I was passing a fire station, when a lady speeds down the road, pulls in the driveway, pops a trunk, takes out a BABY, puts it on the stoop, and speeds away. Luckily for me a fireman was coming out of the house as she left, so he found the baby. I just assumed I was sleep-deprived and imagining things, but no, it was very real.

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  12. a dead deer floating in a pond - a residential, busy street area not the woods - ugh!

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  13. A huge pig (not piglet or piggie) but a whopping boar-type roaming the town square in St. John, Virgin Islands. Scared the bejesus out of me.

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  14. You know, Coyote feces has berries in it too. I've seen a few coyotes and a lot of coyote feces, condoms, empty packets of "Extenze," a Chucky doll and an older woman squatting in the middle of the trail (in her defense it was really early & there isn't any place to go on the side of the trail). I'm thankful I've never seen a baby, a bear, or a dead body (I saw one in Vegas though).

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    1. You saw a dead body in Vegas???
      Yes, but the bear poop is such an extremely large pile...can't imagine a coyote could pull that off...

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  15. I am an unapologetic Ebola alarmist. Admittedly, I've also been known to banish my kids from the house under threat of a potential lice outbreak at their school. And I do live in the vicinity of the outbreak.

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  16. I laughed out loud at "Or pilots getting rid of evidence," haha. And I'm not worried about ebola from a personal health perspective, but I'm fairly concerned about the effect it's having in Africa. I'm taking a class on global health right now, and this is something we've been discussing regularly the past few weeks.

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  17. I love scoping the roadways/trails! I found a pile of bones once, either a serial killer is on the loose or a hunter ditched some deer remains! I'm flying to San Francisco on monday, hoping Ebola keeps it's distance!!! I was fine until the airline news!! Stay safe!

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  18. Two smartphones, pretty smashed up, in the last 2 weeks! Keep wondering if someone would throw their phone out of the car or if maybe they were left on the roof of the car then they drove off? Puzzled. Also puzzled by the underwear, which I also see a lot! Keep looking - maybe one day you'll find money!

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  19. Gotta wonder about all the underwear. The best thing I ever found was a Starbuck's gift card with $50 on it! I did check to see if it was registered, but it wasn't so I figured finders keepers...

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  20. Coolest thing I ever found was an amber pendant that still had a $120 price tag attached. The price tag didn't identify any store & the pendant wasn't in front of any particular business or house, so ground score for me!

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  21. Phones, snakes (ick!), mini-bottles, raging chihauhaus... Seems like I, too have, seen it all. Except deer carcass, that is.
    Wasnt freaking out about ebola until I saw on the news tonight of it hitting Atlanta which is closer to my neck of the woods. i must say, they are trying hard to assure the public by saying health care workers are most at risk. BUT ebola victims aren't just hospital patients... They are in contact with family members and other people before even being aware that they are sick! How can we NOT freak out! I just have to remind myself I am not in control, and as the disney song says... LET IT GO!

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    1. Yes, I am trying to do the same. LET IT GO. But it is spooky.

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  22. Found several cell phones in sharp corners. Seems they tend to slide off the dash and out the outside window at high speed. Snake or two on the Greenline (rails to rails). Dead beaver about 2 weeks ago. Multitude of raccoon, possum & armadillo. Full set of screwdriver bits and Allen wrenches - must have fallen off a truck in mid-corner.

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  23. From the fact sheets that I read, Ebola is not transmitted like the flu, it isn't airborne. And you can't get it unless the carrier is exhibiting symptoms. You also don't get it from casual contact, like shaking hands. You have to come into contact with the infection and that is why caregivers are so at risk. They are in direct contact of the infection itself.

    The most bizarre thing I found beside the trail was a plastic skeleton.

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  24. What's up with all the socks? I find socks on the road all the time. Once I found a $20.

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  25. I have also found a used condom, someone had placed it on a post along the trail, like they were displaying it like a trophy or something. I also on a semi-routine basis find various forms of discarded underwear--panties, camisoles, slips. One weekend I found several of those pint size liquor bottles along the trail. No, they weren't found the same day as the condom and the underwear--too bad, it would have meant someone had a fantastic night! But the scariest thing I have encountered on the trail is when a pack of about 10 wild boars ran across the path not 20 feet in front of me (I live in Germany and run on trails in heavily wooded/forest areas). I froze in my tracks and tried not to draw attention to myself. They didn't see me and continued on their merry way, stampeding into the forest on the other side of the path. I am not sure what I would have done had they seen me and turned to me...no way I could outrun those suckers! And yes, I still run that path, all the time. It's one of my favorites. I haven't seen a boar again since, only deer and squirrels and squished frogs.

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  26. That's an Australian Budgerigar. He was probably somebodies escaped pet.

    For your amusement Google budgie smugglers

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  27. I once found a wallet on my run. NBD, right? Well, it had the badge of a County Sheriff's Deputy in it, along with all his personal info (including his SS card)! A bunch of the cards were scattered along the road. I backtracked and picked up all the pieces, ran home with the wallet and called dispatch to report my find/have him come pick up his stuff. And no, there wasn't any cash in it. ;)

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  28. I've encountered tons of the condomns on my runs, underwear (which always begs the question: what happened while the user was wearing them that the user felt their only option was to toss them out of a moving car...?), liquor bottles, pony tail holders (again, did they just decide to walk or jog with their hair down after several feet, yards, miles with a pony in or did it just fall out and they decided not to go back and pick it up?). One time, I found a dead mouse, and then a dead snake, toad or frog (not sure it was pretty mangled) followed by a turkey buzzard standing on top of a dead fox with a part of a dead cat hanging out of his belly that had been hit by a car. We called animal control and their best guess was the fox was hit by the car, he started to vomit out the contents of his guts, and then died along side the road, which is where the buzzard took over and pulled part of the dead cat out of him. We started singing "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..."
    As for Ebola, I'm concerned, but there's a million things that could get me in addition to Ebola, so I am trying to remain calm in the face of it. We are starting the cold/flu season in the Mid-Atlantic states now, so hand washing is key, and my skin is about to be scrubbed off, by Christmas, my digits look like raw meat from the constant hand washing.

    Amy P. Philly Runner

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  29. Weirdest things I've found would have to be a full bottle of off-brand ranch dressing placed on a low, stone wall as if it was on display. I actually documented it daily for the three days it took before someone smashed it to bits, and it was a huge hit with my facebook friends: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154467212050604.1073741828.781615603&type=1&l=07435f158d

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  30. I often see water bottles full of what I'm guessing is urine. The most aggravating thing I see all too often on my runs on the roads and trails around my neighborhood is dog poo (or maybe it's human poo - but I'm guessing dog poo is more likely) that someone has taken the time and effort to wrap up in a plastic bag, but then just leaves along the side of the trail or road. Take your poo with you folks!

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  31. I found an injured jack rabbit once that appeared to have been hit by a car. It was dragging it's hind quarters, so I took my running shirt off to cradle it in. I walked back to my car & drove it to a Petsmart up the street, not knowing of any vet offices in the area. I think the Vet at Petsmart thought it was my rabbit, because he was telling me what he could do for the injury.Thank goodness the vet tech was there to excuse me, so I could finish my run. I wonder what became of "Jack"..........................

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  32. In the weird wildlife category: a HUGE snapping turtle, a fox, a bigass snake and tons of deer/fawns.
    In the misc category: one of those 1970s Fisher-Price little people and 1 ladies black pump.

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  34. What is with the used condoms and underwear? I see a ton of them when out running. People are so gross.

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  35. Most random? Well, I just moved to CO and one of the first times I went running, I almost stepped on a snake. It was a little one, luckily, but still...

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  36. Today I saw a santa hat in the ditch!

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  37. Yesterday I ran the Baystate half marathon and saw a set of dentures on the side of the highway. I spent a good part of the race hypothesizing what events led to that unlikely final resting spot!

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  38. Hmmm, used condoms and gophers when I am running in the city, but out in the mountains nearby I have seen deer, coyotes, and a moose this summer even. The moose was a young one but they are huge so it made my girlfriend and I pick up the pace considerably.

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