One elk caused three different motor vehicle accidents in Las Animas County last month, but the more that we think about it, we think that headline is entirely misleading.

 

If a person reads that, they’re probably led to believe that one elk raced throughout traffic and onto vehicles like it was looking for Vin Diesel in a Fast & Furious film [Elk Fast & Elk Furious: Live by the Herd, Die by the Herd (This joke is awful and we could do better, make sure to write something funnier before we go to print, definitely don’t print this sentence that’s been written. Gosh, wouldn’t that be insanely embarrassing?)].

 

According to an article from KKTV, a much more accurate way to explain this story is that an elk caused a car crash on I-25, and then its corpse caused two more crashes. Not as cool, right?

 

One car hit the elk, which then led to the death of the elk. According to our research, which is some incredibly light googling, this can happen when an animal gets hit by a two-ton locomotive traveling at upwards of 70 miles-per-hour.

 

Five minutes later, another car hit the elk, which caused the vehicle to roll and one patient having to be airlifted to the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, a third car hit the elk, with no injuries being reported, though we like to imagine the driver told authorities that he lived his life one quarter-elk at a time. 

 

Perhaps even more importantly, the article outlining the incident was written by a “Tony Keith,” and we were honestly so high when we read it that we wondered if the country artist of “Red Solo Cup” and “I Love This Bar” fame had suddenly turned to a life of mediocre journalism.

Don’t look it up. He didn’t. It’s a different guy.