I've posted about the elk many times before on this blog. While I might go months without seeing one, a field I drive by everyday is a frequent location to spot them. However, it might not be for much longer. A few months ago, over the summer, I noticed that a few posts with flags on them had been planted into a roughly square shape near the road. One or two more had been planted further back. They seemed to be planted in the wrong place to indicate a future building project. In didn't really matter much anyway, for they are displaced in the downpour that inundated the area a week after the devastating late-July floods. A mudslide had come down the hollow at the rear of the field and covered a large swath of the field in mud, right up to the road. The other end of the field, near a drainage ditch, got covered in water for weeks. Even after regular rain, that end of the field could get flooded, due to a large bowl that was there. Then, just a few weeks ago, heavy equipment came in and started rearranging the entire field. Dirt from the end near the hillside was dug up and used to fill in the bowl by the ditch. The entire field got leveled. More posts and flags were placed. Last week, gravel was placed along a a makeshift path to the former bowl. Gossip suggests that a discount store will be coming in, but no one seems to be sure which one. There is a Family Dollar less than a mile down the road. While it was slightly damaged during the flood, this project seemed to start well before the floods. There is already a Dollar General barely five miles away in one direction, and another one twelve miles or so in another direction, and a third about the same distance away in a third direction. Now, the closest store is a little cramp with a smallish parking lot, the elk field isn't too much larger. Maybe that one will close and be replaced by this new one. This could even be in response to the frequent wrecks delivery trucks have been wrecking on their way to one of the other stores. On the day of the July floods, one got stuck for about four hours. Now, this may have lasted so long due to the fact that flooding had shut down one road for the wrecker to arrive and a downed tree blocked the other access road. I even passed by the delivery truck as it was led by a state trooper to its destination later that afternoon once it was cleared. Still, there is no clear answer to what is going to be put in. What is even stranger is that it is the wrong time of year to start erecting a building. It is mid/late November when I write this. The weather is too cold now to lay a foundation easily. The flooding could have delayed the schedule. This still doesn't take the poor drainage into consideration. The ditch still overflows during most rains, even after the bowl has been filled. Whatever store goes in, the building could be prone to have multiple problems. The one problem that the owners might not have considered is the elk herd. While the animals might be scared off during the initial building, the herd might return in their usual wanderings. Even if their usual access was blocked off, I've seen them scale the nearby hillside. The elk, as well as deer, might congregate wherever they can looking for fodder. This could lead to major problems for whoever is between the elk and where they want to go. Some might even try to cross the road if the former field gets completely paved over. This could lead to many traffic problems, as I've seen elk get awfully close to the road before. If this project had been more in the open, people could have been more output for this project. This is only my opinion, but I do believe more people would have wanted a place for elk to show up than the fourth (or possibly the fifth) outlet for a discount store chain in a twelve-mile radius.
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