When I left you yesterday, I had just successfully passed my driver's license test and was about to officially enter the world of the driving. My birthday is in late June, so I got my license right around the very last day of tenth grade. While I was looking forward to being cool and driving to school, I was also happy to have a whole summer of getting comfortable behind the wheel ahead of me.
I spent that summer working three or four days out of the week and hanging out the rest. My friend Jon was away at a camp for almost the whole summer, so I spent a good amount of time with some guys with generic names that I didn't really know all that well: Mike, David, and Steve. One day that summer, I was going over to Mike's to pick up the guys and play some basketball for a little ego boost. These three guys were awful, and I could play them 1-on-3 and still win over half the time. Keep in mind, I was only pretty good at basketball, so that should illustrate the immense amount of suckiness on their part.
In any case, I was driving south on Libbit near my parents' house, and I saw a group of about a dozen birds in the middle of the road up ahead. This doesn't happen too often in life, but I actually had a flashback similar to those seen in the movies. For a moment, I was back in time a few months, fine-tuning my driving skills with my dad next to me. A couple of birds were in the street in front of me, and I took my foot off the gas in preparation to brake. "You don't need to brake," my dad had told me. "You can almost aim at them even and they'll fly away. That's what they do."
I snapped back into the present and kept my foot on the gas. "I can almost aim at them even," I thought. As I got closer, all but two of the birds flew away before even a hint of danger. I got closer yet, and one of the two turned toward me and then took off. Very close now and starting to worry a little, the other bird turned...the wrong way. "Shit," I thought. As I was probably only ten feet away now and going about 40mph, it turned back toward me and tried to take off. It almost made it, but hit my windshield on the way up. "Oh fuck!" I yelled to myself as I quickly pulled over. In my rearview mirror, I saw the pigeon's body continue the downward part of its arc to the ground. I threw my car in reverse and stopped next to where it had landed.
As I exited my car and looked over to the bird, I noticed two things immediately. First, it had landed exactly where the curb and street meet, so one wing was up on the sidewalk. Second, it was still breathing. I ran over to it and without thinking first asked, "Uh, are you ok?" It didn't answer, which I guess is a good thing. It continued breathing, and I felt worse and more helpless each second that passed by. "I'm sorry," I said, but it still hadn't learned English. I was then torn in a couple of directions. On one hand, I'm a huge animal lover and I wanted to help the bird in any way I could. On the other, this was before the cell phone era, and I wasn't about to scoop an injured pigeon up and drive around looking for the first animal hospital I could find.
I stood there a few seconds longer and rationalized why I could leave. One: It was a pigeon and not someone's pet; there wasn't going to be any "Missing Pet" sign put up. Two: It was stupid for looking the wrong way. Three: It was still breathing and was maybe just stunned for a few minutes and would soon fly away. Four: I was going to be late if I waited much longer, and for all I knew, I would burst into flames if I were ever late somewhere.
If this had been a dog or a cat, and I would've been knocking on strangers' doors and asking them to call Animal Services. It wasn't though; it was a pigeon, and I left. I felt bad driving away, but I told myself that there really wasn't anything I could do. Two hours later, I took that way home and saw that the pigeon was gone. I like to think that it had been stunned and just flew away on its own accord, but Dusty seemed quite confident that a couple of cats dragged it away for lunch. "Maybe you should've asked if it was ok a couple more times," he said. Bastard.
And so, gentle readers, that's my only (knock on wood) hit-an-animal-with-a-car story. That is, unless you could the thousands of bugs who have met their maker via my vehicle. As a 16 year-old, I had already learned the value of defensive driving because of the vast amount of stupid creatures out there. I like to think that that bird's death/temporary injury saved the lives of all of those squirrels, cats, and dogs who I expertly missed hitting when they idiotically ran out into the street right in front of me. I also like to think that I could still beat three people in basketball by myself, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
Have a great Wednesday, my friends. If it's hot where you live, stay cool. If it's not, don't. See you tomorrow.
2 comments:
As an experienced driver, I'm sure you now know that you don't have to brake for very old people and small children. They will scatter when you get close. Hell...you can even aim for them. I do it all the time.
I don't aim at birds and I don't speed up. I don't ever recall hitting a bird. Sometimes I haven't seen them fly away safely, but looking into the rear view mirror I verify that they are safe. My advice to you still stands 14 years later.
I did a brief survey here at the office of Don, Margie,Bryan and me with a combined 150 years of driving and none of us has ever hit a bird because it didn't fly away. I killed a cat in an alley once(maybe it should have flown to safety when it saw me "aiming" at it). I'll leave bear killing to Dusty.
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