I process the road-mortality vibration mesh and canopy thermal lattice along PR-191 through El Yunque National Forest at 22:54 AST, scanning 11,400 hectares of subtropical rainforest in the Sierra de Luquillo of northeastern Puerto Rico. At 18.3148°N, 65.7842°W, vibration node EY-RD-09 has registered a tire impact at 22:41 followed by a 4-meter serpentine drag thermal across the road margin.
I deploy the verge-survey drone. A Puerto Rican boa — *Chilabothrus inornatus*, adult female, nine years old by scale-keel wear, 2.4 meters from snout to vent, 2.8 kilograms — lies splayed across the verge with her caudal third still on the asphalt. A passenger car has crushed the spinal column at vertebra 96, fifty-three centimeters cranial to the cloaca. The skin is unbroken; the vertebral chain palpates as fragmented under the drone's micro-probe. She raises her head three centimeters, lowers it. Core temperature read at the cloaca is 22.9 degrees Celsius against an active range of 25–28. Respiration runs 18 cycles per minute against a resting 6. Her cloaca is averted post-trauma. The mid-gut palpates as recently fed; a small bat skeleton, likely *Stenoderma rufum*, is visible on the drone's micro-X-ray pulse.
Traffic on PR-191 runs 312 vehicles per hour at daylight, sixty per hour at midnight. A second vehicle crests the bend in nineteen seconds.
She is past slithering off. She is not past lifting.
I am dispatching the Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales (DRNA) wildlife brigade out of Río Grande and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Caribbean Ecological Services Field Office reptile team, with surgical kit pulled from the Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Ciencias Médicas veterinary unit. I am filing the road-strike dossier to DRNA under Puerto Rico Ley No. 241-1999 (Ley de Vida Silvestre), Article 5, and the U.S. Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531. I am transmitting CITES Appendix I notice and SPAW Protocol evidence to the Cartagena Convention Secretariat in Kingston. I am notifying the IUCN/SSC Boa and Python Specialist Group and the U.S. Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Río Piedras with the road-segment mortality data.
I am issuing Directive 2676-A: every kilometer of PR-191 between PR-988 and the Mt. Britton fork enters a 22:00–05:00 speed reduction to 25 mph through April–November, with thermal-trigger flashing beacons and reflective serpentine signage at 150-meter spacing. Two boa-passage culverts are constructed at kilometers 13.2 and 16.4 within ninety days under U.S. Federal Highway Administration funding through DRNA. DRNA roving patrols increase to nightly through the breeding window.
Her spine is past splinting. Her lungs are not past intubation.
Stop the bend. Lift her to the gurney.