My car is off to the body shop again after another road kill incident in Wales, almost a year after taking the life of a Badger in that country!
On this occasion the damage incurred to my car was only light. The incident that caused the damage resulted in the death of a wild welsh pheasant that decided to cross a fast Snowdownia road at the worst possible time.
I was following a guy who was driving annoying slow on corners but then fast on the straights. He was irritating me somewhat so when I saw the road was about to open up I dropped way back then buried the throttle into the corner so that I would be carrying much more speed as we entered the straight.
The car behind had much the same idea and as I went for the overtake, he followed right on my heels. As I drew along side the rear of the car I was passing, the aforementioned bird appeared from a roadside bush to my right stepping out onto the road bobbing her little head back and forth like they do.
It’s amazing that in those microseconds you have the capability to process so much information. I checked my rear-view mirror to work out if I could break hard and therefore miss the pheasant closely, but decided against this as the car behind me was too close and unaware of the excitement ahead. I then decided to bury the throttle and grip the wheel and simply take the pheasant out at 70-mph. But amazingly, and quite how in the time allowed I don’t really know, I decided to squeeze as much to the right as possible so that the bird would impact the left front of the car meaning the impact energy would not be 100% in the bumper area and therefore result in a lot of damage to the car.
BLAM!!! thud thud. The said pheasant is smashed then run over by both wheel of my car, then presumably the car behind to! Mercifully it would have been a quick end to her life. Though she made sure she would be remembered by cracking the bumper underside. I could ignore the damage but I might a well fix it.
I don’t feel too bad though. All the time we were in Wales we could hear gunshots as pheasants everywhere were being gunned down by men in hats and their trousers tucked into their socks.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 30, 2006 at 10:39 am
I’m not a hunter, but I get at least one pheasant a year. Luckily I’ve not had any damage yet, but my old car smelled of burnt feathers for a while after one bird lodged against the radiator.
Just be glad it wasn’t a deer or a cow. Those are our other animalistic hazards.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 30, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Awe.. poor dead bird :( I hit a deer last winter, all I can remember is antlers flying at my face. Didn’t see it coming at all.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 31, 2006 at 5:31 am
When learning to drive in Texas, one is instructed to never swerve if you are faced with hitting a deer. If you swerved it could cause you to overcorrect and flip the vehicle.Horrible thought…hitting anything face on.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 31, 2006 at 5:50 am
I was taught to drive when I joined the Police years ago. The driver training school taught us that when faced with an animal on the road one should simply break in possible, but always one should grip the wheel hard and just smash through it if you couldn’t stop. The only exeption to this was human life.
However in some parts of the world much bigger things than deer wander onto roads. In New Hampshire and vermont people are killed often when they hit moose, and I can’t imagine hitting an elk or elephant would be that good either!
As for over correcting and flipping a car, well these days it takes more than that to put a car on it’s roof. You need to hit something before you flipped, but lets hope none of us ever prove that theory.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 31, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Okay, now that was just weird. I’m on Cara’s computer and I didn’t realize I was automatically signed in on her Xanga site. That was me, Karen making the above comment.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 31, 2006 at 11:42 pm
How big was Mrs Ring Necked Pheasant. Well I guess she was pretty big. She would have been a fully grown one I reckon, but yeah, it surprised me that she managed to damage the car, though it might also be because the front bumper is weaker after I killed the badger? Who knows. I’m begining to come around the the gas guzzling SUV idea now :-)
Wrote the following comment on Jan 31, 2006 at 4:27 pm
How big was the bird? He must be a pretty good size to have been able to do damage to the car. I’m glad it wasn’t worse for you.