| It was enough to stop me in my tracks. I had positioned myself on one side of the loading board and young Burt was on the other side. I had control of the wench and began pulling the body of the elk up the board ever so slowly. We struggled with keeping it centered on the board. It was during one of the times I stopped the wench so we could reposition the elk’s body that I noticed the eyes. They were so far above the height I would expect to see a set of eyes that at very first sight I thought I was not seeing correctly. What I was seeing I wasn’t sure but it couldn’t be a set of eyes. Not looking at me from that height. Worse yet was they were on the down side of the mountain. The elk had been racing down the mountain which explained to some extent how the accident happened. Clearly there was no time for the driver to react. The elk may have even not touched the ground before it was struck. They are big animals and coming from the up side of the mountain it may have been able to jump and take one stride before launching again to clear the concrete forms they have up to separate the traffic from the different directions they travel. Then the animal might have been struck before ever touching the ground on that side of the highway. The same was true for the cougar. next page |  |