“So, what kind of roadkill are you seeing out there?”

“Why,” I asked, “are you hungry? Do you want me to pick some up? You kill it, we grill it-style?”

“No, no, what I mean to ask is what kind of animals do they have out there, but I figure the only way you’d see animals on the road is if they’re dead.”

Mom is an animal lover. She is not the best communicator.

“Well…” and then I just started naming animals I’d seen, dead, on the side of the road. It seemed to be what she was looking for, since her follow-up question was “Did you see any raccoons? Or foxes?” I think she was waiting for me to say something exotic, like a llama or an emu, but I had nothing for her.

“No mom, no raccoons. No foxes. Mostly deer.”

“Aw, that’s too bad.”

A couple days later, I entered Texas.

I called my mother. I finally had something to report.

“Mom, I’m in Texas, and I have updates on roadkill for you.”

“Oh?”

“Armadillos. Lots of armadillos.”

This seemed to pique her interest. The pandemic has been hard on us all, so if she was curious, I would elaborate.

“Well, they’re dead, but I see them pushed off the highway on the side of the road. There’s another one!”

“Your dad always called them Texas speedbumps.”

“There’s another one!”

She told me about the birds she’d seen in the bird feeder that afternoon.

“Mom, there’s another one! And another one! They’re all over!”

“Well then. I guess your father was right.”