I have almost no experience running over living things with my vehicle. As a general rule, I will dodge, swerve, or yield to most any living thing because...I'm nice.
However, with that said, the ride home from work recently involved a hit and run. Let me explain.
I was headed west on a road where the speed limit is 50 mph. I was pretty much maintaining that speed. The sun had set behind the mountains yet the street lights had not turned on. I was on my cell phone with Bethany. I approached a 3-way intersection with traffic coming toward me and a side street to my left. There was no stop sign and I usually motor along the road without so much as a slow down. However on this particular night, I noticed a large bird stroll into the path of oncoming traffic. But my focus turned from the bird for a moment to the oncoming traffic as it came to a halt. Also there was the truck waiting at the intersection on the side road to make a left-hand turn. It looked like the two people in there were smiling and watching this bird saunter out into traffic. At this point, the bird left the lane of oncoming traffic and strolled into my lane. Do you see the problem? I was close enough to see the expressions on the faces of the two people in the truck on the side road which means I was pretty darn close to the bird.
There's some detail about this bird I noticed in the brief fraction of a second I had to look at it. It was a very beautiful bird. The top section of it's slender neck was a dark blue. It had a distinct white ring below the blue and there was a lot of detail in the rest of the rusty brown and yellowish-orange feathers all over it's body. It seemed to stand about 1.5 feet tall which is about eye level with my bumper...
Anyway, my fascination with the colorful detail of this bird was alarmingly interrupted by the realization that it's days were numbered, zero to be precise. I tried to slow down but the cars behind me were following too closely. The bird and I made eye contact just before it vanished behind the front corner of my car. And with that, a shocking thud was felt from the the front of the car followed by two softer thuds below the car. Traffic behind me slowed down as I hit my brakes. In my rear view mirror I watched vehicles slowly pass through a cloud of feathers and dust.
The trauma of the ordeal lasted the rest of the ride home. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I felt bad, almost as bad as when I had caught my first fish at a scouting campout and had to beat it over the head with a metal pipe to kill it before I could gut it. In the coming days I checked for any remnant of the bird but never found anything.
Since then, I've had near misses with two other birds and a mouse, although with the mouse, I'm half tempted to help control the pest population. :)
5 comments:
I had a dove jump in front of me as I drove through my neighborhood. I still remember watching those gray feathers flying around behind my car. Yuck! Not a pretty picture. I'm so sorry you had a nasty, feathery encounter.
Kenny just cleaned the remnants of the bird I hit a few weeks ago off the car...ewww! I was sure I missed it, but, No...I got it flush. It was stuck in the front grill. Silly drunk bird :(
I still remember my encounter with hitting a bird. I think I cried momentarily in my car, because it is the first thing I think I ever killed. The feathery plume through my rear view mirror didn't help my sadness. I guess it happens to the best of us! Although what does that say about our driving?
What does it say about our driving? Well, if you think about all the space in front of the car, I'd say we have pretty good aim! :)
You can't blame yourself, as if you'd had tried to avoid it, we may be reading of a terrible car accident involving you. (but I'm sure you realize this already.) But, I know the feeling as when I once hit a duck with an errant line drive golf shot...
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