I hit an animal, well not on purpose, not really, and it’s not like I punched one or it was in one corner and I was in the other and we squared off like Rocky and Clubber and it wasn’t a case of me saying ‘he hit me first’ like in that old Bill Cosby skit and I was in my Honda and the car really did the hitting and I wasn’t speeding, well not really, and my hands were at 9 and 3 (they don’t teach the 10 and 2 technique anymore because a deploying airbag could turn your forearms into matchsticks) and it wasn’t a large animal either, it was small and I’m not sure if I realized I hit it at the time.
I see birds all of the time and I don’t mean attractive girls in England but the flighty kind, and I still don’t means girls of any kind, but birds of a feather who sometimes flock together. I often marvel at how quickly they change direction and I just think they’re showing off because I couldn't do that even if I was still in my twenties and running marathons and ate like a bird. But I was probably doing 70 or 80 and I remember seeing something come across the windshield and I, honesty, didn’t think about it again, until I got home.
I park my car in the street when I get the mail and block my mailbox because, sometimes, and I think they do it on purpose, my neighbors drive by a bit too close and I’d rather they hit the car instead of me as I have this strange addiction to breathing in and out; call me sentimental. And when I came around the front of the car, that’s when I saw it. Affixed to the front of my car was a little bird and he was upside down. I had to look at him for a minute just to make sure he was dead and then I still wasn’t sure.
But he was, or maybe it was a she, I didn’t check, and I really wouldn’t know how to but perhaps I could have waited and noticed which bathroom it flew into, connected to the front of my car as if it was checking if I had a Hemi under the hood, which I don’t, it’s a Honda, but I did have 240 ponies in there which I thankfully don’t have to pick up the poop for.
But the fact remained that I killed a bird and I thought, just for a moment, that it could have been a suicide like the person who is walking on the street when someone jumps off a building and splat is where I came in. So now I had a problem, I had committed Birder or Murduck or Heckle-and-Jeckle-icide even though it was just the one Tweety-sized bird and I didn’t see a putty-tat to push the blame, and I had this little bird attached to the grill, grilled birdie if you will.
Instead of pulling into the garage like I normally do, I went out on the highway and got the Honda up to 90, officer that is not an admission of guilt, and nothing; the bird was still there. I drove through some long grass and I still had a hood ornament; that little birdie had my hood in a death grip. I parked in the garage and played the ostrich role just expecting this to resolve itself.
The next morning, I fired up the Honda and off I went with a literal wingman as my wingman. My commute is 62 miles, one way, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes, I try to keep it between 80 and 100mph; the end of my commute has me back at 90 or so and I figured that would that would be enough. It wasn’t. It’s been a few days and over 500 miles and my little buddy is still hanging in there.
