Weird things with animals have been happening on Pennsylvania roadways

Two strange things involving animals occurred on Pennsylvania roads recently. Both seemed like scenes from movies. When you read about them, you will say to yourself, “I’ve seen these before.”

First, a strange incident occurred in York County Jan 6 that made me think about a nearly 30-year-old movie. I wonder how many of you thought of it, too.

Newberry Township police late that evening pulled over a suspected drunken or drugged driver and discovered a live deer in the hatchback area of the vehicle.

The young woman driver had apparently hit the deer earlier and then, thinking it was dead, her male companion got out and placed it in the back. We’re not sure what they planned to do with it.

The occupants told the officers they had later realized the deer was still alive but kept driving anyway, according to police. Reading about this, I immediately thought of the 1995 movie Tommy Boy, starring Chris Farley and David Spade, of Saturday Night Live fame.

If you watched the scene in which the trapped deer destroys Spade’s car, I can’t think you’ve forgotten it. Watch it here. It makes me wonder what the York County passenger and driver said to each other when they figured out the deer in the back of their car was alive. Maybe they said, “IT’S ALIVE!” like Farley did.

After the stop, police said they told the passenger to release the deer. It can be seen struggling as it was carried across the road in the screen-grab photo above, taken from the dash cam video posted by police.

A few weeks later, residents of Montour County were warned not to approach macaque monkeys running loose after a crash involving a pickup that was towing a trailer taking about 100 of the animals to a lab.

A number of monkeys escaped after the collision between the pickup and a dump truck, and at least one remained unaccounted for a day after the crash in frigid weather.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency was providing “technical assistance” to state police. The shipment of monkeys was its way to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving that morning at New York’s Kennedy Airport from Mauritius, the agency said. Later, it was reported that all the monkeys were euthanized.