Road Work

A passing driver found it on the morning complaint. Well, to be fair, he technically didn’t “find” all of it . . . that came much later.

The driver complained about a tarp blocking his commute on a narrow patch of road. He said he had to pull over to the shoulder to avoid the massive, bumpy tarp. The only problem was this particular section of highway didn’t have much in the way of a shoulder - just a foot at most of tan stone before you plunged into the river. On the other side of the road sat a rocky and jagged cliffside, giving the driver very little room to maneuver and every reason to be pissed off.

We were confused when we got his call. There were no construction projects in the area. After an hour of early morning due diligence, we confirmed no one had any business in that desolate stretch of highway. After guzzling our fair share of bad coffee, we had little other choice but to go out and see what could be done about the tarp. That’s when we made an ominous discovery.

It wasn’t a tarp.

It was a giant, massive wing. The wing was made out of a strong, leathery material, devoid of all feathers. But there was no question about it - whatever this thing was, it had once been alive.

We had to scale the cliffside in order to follow the large wing to the source. What we found defied any expectation. It could best be described as a bird without any feathers, covered in brown leathery scales. It measured about the length of three semis with a wingspan about the size of six semis altogether.

Whatever the creature was, it was definitely dead now. It lay its outstretched form over the rocky cliffs, as if it was trying to burrow into the massive stone spires for some unknown reason. Its head unnerved us the most. The head alone measured the size of two minivans, and reminded us of a vulture’s head, bald and jagged, but its snout was far longer and crooker than any bird we’d ever seen. Frankly, calling it a bird was an insult to avian life everywhere. It was neither a bird nor a reptile, but some chilling combination of both.

And before you start with me, yes, I know some birds share the traits of the dinosaurs of old. I have taken at least one biology class in my day. But despite its enormous size, this thing was far beyond any bird I had ever seen, dinosaur or otherwise. 

After we’d taken in the sheer scale of the thing, the real work began. We had to move it. We couldn’t just leave it taking up half the road, and we also feared simply moving the wing off the road wouldn’t solve the problem entirely. Already the giant carcass was attracting crows and other carrion creatures.

We needed to transport the thing somehow, but this proved difficult. After a half-hour of belly-aching on whose department it fell under, we quickly realized that none of the traditional means would have worked anyway. The creature was too long for a semi. Its massive wingspan would have more than taken up the road, and even if we could have wrapped the creature in its own wings, making it look like the world’s largest and most disgusting burrito, it still wouldn’t hit any of the vehicles we had available.

It was time to start thinking outside of the box.

One of our interns had just received their pilot’s licenses. We put in a call to the local airport, and we were able to wrangle up a few pilots and, for a not-great-for-our-budget fee, several helicopters on loan. 

From there, we hooked several cables into the bird and watched as several helicopters ferried it into the night sky. The only problem is we had to wait until the night had fallen to do this. It would have looked extremely conspicuous otherwise. As such, we had to weather the storm of dozens of angry phone calls demanding to know why the road was closed and why we couldn’t get off our lazy butts to do something about it. We did our best to assuage their concerns, but for nearly twelve hours there was little we could do.

However, once the helicopters carried it away the problem was fixed. The road was now passable and we could clear away the barricades. The last I saw it, it had been deposited into a quarry a couple of miles outside the nearest town. The salt would preserve the corpse, and I had no doubt within a few hours, the place would be crawling with feds. That’s what usually happens with these things. I’m sure the thing’s carcass would disappear within a week or two, with no answers to be found thereafter.

There was, however, one last thing which unsettled me about the whole affair. As I was guiding the helicopters into their final descent, I noticed a massive wound in the creature’s side. I had spent so much wondering what this thing was that I hadn’t spent much time asking the real question.

Just what was the cause of death?

Clearly the massive wound in the creature’s side contributed to its demise. Both the coroner and animal control concluded the thing died for “massive blood loss” before they packed up their gear and called it a day . . . or at that point . . . night. 

But that just left me with one final question: what kind of creature could have big enough to bring down such a massive bird?

And was it still out there?