In 2012, a North Dakota woman named Donna called in to a morning talk-radio program hoping to draw attention to a situation that had been bothering her. She’d been in three car crashes involving deer, and each time, it had happened near a DEER XING sign on a busy road. “Why,” she lamented in a recorded encounter that would eventually top one million internet hits, “are we encouraging deer to cross the road in such high-traffic areas?” A short silence followed. “You seem to think,” one of the hosts began tentatively, “that deer-crossing signs are telling deer where to cross?” As nicely as
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