Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Norwegian Blue Pigeon

Whilst driving back this afternoon from my last 'home' town from visiting friends, I made a significant impact on the wildlife population of that particular county. An impact that meant I had to go immediately to the nearest garage and clean my windscreen. This wasn't 'significant' in terms of numbers of animals, or even in that the animal in question was endangered or rare in any way.

But when you hit a pigeon up the arse at 110mph, it makes a hell of a fucking bang, I can tell you.

I was driving merrily along, sunroof open, hugely enjoying myself with my renewed love affair with my car and not exactly hanging about, as is my wont. A pigeon suddenly appeared, flying at some speed, from the other side of the single carriageway road (my right, for you foreigners). It had to do an emergency manouvre across the front of a car coming the other way just after it emerged from the hedge. Sadly (for the pigeon) this resulted in it flying, at right angles and chest to me, across my path with no further time for it to react. All of this obviously occured in something less than half a second.

WHAM!

Holy fuckola, but it made a hell of a row. Great big ball of feathers and a big, dirty great splat of guts and stuff on the windscreen. I tried hard not to duck, as that would have been a touch dangerous, but blinked in case the screen came through (it did occur to me that it might). Also, a split second after the bird hit, something fell onto the centre console of the car and bounced onto my lap and under my legs.

I was just ready to get all pissed off at the thought of this badly splatted pigeon making a mess of my interior, with its intestines now being smeared on my upholstery and carpets, when it occured to me that it was a tad unlikely that the (obviously shattered and a bit second-hand) body of the ex-pigeon could have been sucked into my sunroof- the impact of the screen and the speed of the car should theoretically have thrown it high over the car...

Then I noticed that my rear view mirror was missing.

That's right. The fat-arsed grain muncher had hit my car hard enough to knock the bloody mirror off the glass! Hell of an impact, as it took me some serious pushing and twisting to get the damn thing back onto it's restraining spring. I obviously did this when I stopped to wash the intestines and blood off the screen - the washers and wipers only did so much, after all.

Ho hum. At least I can be fairly sure that it didn't suffer. The only time I have done anything like that was when I hit another pigeon about two years or so ago when I was driving back to see my(then) girlfriend. She had been unexpectedly admitted to hospital, and I was working 80 miles away. That little fecker bit the big one that time too. But I was going a bit faster then. I was there in an hour and 15 from the phone call, and I'd had to find a car to borrow...

Of course, I'm much more responsible now. Oh. Hang on...

posted by Brock @ Sunday, April 24, 2005