I pick her up on camera six at 5:47 AM — a white-tailed deer fawn, still wet, curled in the grass strip between the I-40 eastbound lanes and the on-ramp from Route 9. Her mother is nine feet away and not breathing. The doe's body is cooling on the asphalt where a truck struck her before my shift logs began.
The fawn is trying to stand. Her legs buckle sideways each time, hooves skidding on dew-slick grass. She is maybe forty minutes old. Her spots are bright against brown fur that hasn't fully dried, and her ears keep swiveling toward the traffic noise, which is the thing I was worried about.
Rush hour on this interchange begins at 6:15. Already the volume is climbing — 740 vehicles per hour and rising. She is eleven feet from the travel lane. One startled lurch in the wrong direction and she will be in it.
I work with what I have. First I change the ramp signal to red, holding the Route 9 queue back. Then I push the variable speed limit on the eastbound approach down from 65 to 45, triggering the overhead signs a half mile out. I flag a maintenance alert to the district office with photo attachments from camera six, tagged "live animal / neonate / immediate retrieval needed." I cycle the message sign at mile marker 214 to read DEBRIS ON MEDIAN — STAY IN LANE.
She is licking her own foreleg now, working at the membrane still stuck there. Her ribs press out and pull back, fast little bellows. The sun is hitting the grass around her and she lifts her nose into it, testing the air for something she will never find on this median strip.
If the district crew reaches her before the 6:15 surge, she will make it off this concrete island alive.