Stay safe little doe! Photo by suzphotofun

One of the more unpleasant jobs at the Illinois Department of Transportation has to be the road kill patrol -- scraping guts off of I-90 is a tough way to make a living. One thing we hadn't previously thought about, though, is what IDOT does with all the squished racoons and mangled deer carcasses. We've come to find out that sometimes they are incinerated, or composted with woodchips, and sometimes they wind up dumped in a mass grave downstate. Right off I-74 near Bloomington/Normal is a ditch that measures 40 feet long, 7 feet wide, and at least 7 feet deep -- nobody is sure of the exact depth because it "depends on how many layers of dead deer and other animal carcasses are hidden by those at the surface of the murky water that’s collected in the mass grave that’s laid open for at least three weeks."

That's right, it's just an open pit of rotting flesh. And not surprisingly, the residents in the area aren't too keen on the smell:

“We got a call Tuesday” from an anonymous person, said Health Department Director Laurie Schierer. “It was the first time we got any whiff (of news) that it was there.”

Nice pun there, Ms. Schierer! Fortunately IDOT intends to cover up the grave soon, eliminating the stench. [Trib]