Explain this one to your insurance agent

We’ve reported stories in the past about road hazards caused by stuff spilled on the highway. Concrete. Fruit. A load of eggs on the Beltway in Northern Virginia.

Here’s a new one: Chicken fat. If that sounds pretty gross, it was.

A tanker was carting chicken fat, a processing byproduct, from a Perdue poultry plant in Accomack County yesterday morning, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, when about 3,000 gallons of the goop spilled on Highway 13. Apparently the driver failed to secure a hatch and the stuff sloshed on the road. He realized the mistake 20 miles later when he stopped at a weigh-station.

Chicken fat is brown and oily and smells like rotten chicken that you left in the fridge and forgot to cook by its sell-by date. For a couple of weeks. Imagine 20 miles of that smell. At 6 in the morning, a roadway covered with same looks like it’s drenched with rain, but it is as slick as wintertime black ice.

At least four wrecks were caused by the fat on the road, including one four-car crash that sent several people to the hospital with minor injuries. The highway department moved quickly to get sand down on the fat.

The tanker’s driver was cited for failure to maintain his load.