I hear a lot of anecdotes about things people find on the highway. I have family members who say they found a free couch on the highway. A friend of a friend said they found a board game set on the highway. Then today a family member was talking about a cat they adopted, and I asked how she ended up with one (she doesn’t like cats), and she said “oh we found her on the highway, we’re surprised nothing happened to her”.
Is this a common thing? What’s the most unexpected thing you found while on the highway?
I worked a job where we cleaned up freeway medians and escapements.
You honestly would be surprised at how much loose cash is just on the side of the freeway. Split among four co-workers, in a three month period, we found over $600+ between us. We used to joke it was like getting “tips” for picking up trash.
Also, lots of stolen items get “ditched.” I heard a story from a former co-worker that last year someone found an in-box Nintendo Switch, and they ended up bringing it to work every day to play on downtime.
The biggest win though, came years before I was in the program. A twenty-something kid found a gym bag with $10k in it. It was reported to authorities, but since no one was ever able to pinpoint who the owner of the money was, the guy was allowed to keep it. That’s the part that surprised me the most, this is a State job, despite being seasonal, and I honestly expected the State to confiscate something that big, but nope, it ended up in the hands of the person who found it. What a payday! I was told this story by the old-timers.
Oh yeah, we also once found the aftermath an Amazon truck that had wrecked so bad the driver had died. We found that out by trying to dig up recent police reports on accidents in the area. The truck was gone but all the packages were still there… It certainly looked like Amazon had no intent to come clean it up, because this was a few days post-accident.
Ten grand? That’s amazing. What was it spent on, if I may ask?
A bunch of stuff from Amazon…
…stuff that for some reason never got delivered…
🤔
No idea, from the story this happened years before I got the job and was near the end of the season. The guy didn’t come back the next season, that’s for sure.
10k in a bag sounds very familiar from that other site.
The pulverized remains of what must’ve been thousands upon thousands of Doritos. A shipping truck must’ve lost a big box or two, there was orange dust all over the road and bags scattered everywhere.
That sounds like a missed opportunity for a commercial.
I thought you were going to describe an animal.
Because it reminded me of road kill I saw on the highway near Medicine Hat, Alberta. We were on a cross country road trip in about 2001 and late in the evening we stopped to look at the beautiful landscape of the prairies. Nearby I saw a big black bump with what looked like sticks around it. There were signs of fur or hair. I stood there staring at it for several minutes trying to figure out what it might be … a box of meat, some chemical bag, a thing of garbage, at old carpet roll or just a lump of soil.
It took far too long for me to realize it was a deer … or what was left of a deer. It probably had been hit days or weeks ago, then run over, again and again and again until it got flattened except for the small part in the shoulder where a hoof or an antler was sticking out like twigs.
I didn’t think road kill the size of a deer at first because I’m from northern Ontario and when someone kills a large animal there, it’s cleared right away and often some old trapper or hunter is willing to pick it up and use it for food, dog scraps, fur, hide or animal bone.
And you’d think it was disgusting to see one of these. All through Alberta and for a small portion of Saskatchewan, dozens of entire deer carcasses are left on the road to rot and be run over without anyone ever clearing them.
I know a cop who found a guy who had taken jimson weed (highly highly bad idea) and was shuffling naked down the breakdown lane with a dead chicken tied to his shoes.
I’m surprised someone could ingest that and tolerate the passing of the vehicles. Hopefully he’s alright.
He ended up in ICU hallucinating for days so it was not a great outcome. Every year when I worked in ER someone would come in having imbibed jimson weed and it was ALWAYS a terrible occurrence.
I’m not sure if this is actually was I saw, but I briefly spotted what really looked like a dildo on the side of the road. I didn’t feel like stopping to take a closer look though.
If it was contaminated, that may justify things.
Yo find strange things on the Autobahn. Which still wonders me the most are single left shoes. And they are pretty common. I mean, how?
I once found a gold bar. That was pretty neat, especially after one year where i was told i became the owner of that die to neglecting from the previous owner.
And one amazing thing was: i was a qualified person at a car accident and helped there. During this i lost my corporate id card. Surprisingly, it was found and sent to the company after 3 years. I was flabbergasted. I still have this id just because of this story.
That’s sweet. It’s nice to know highways bring the community together.
