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BEAST ATTACKS!
Embarrassed of Pokolbin emails:
Here’s a dinky-di way to end your evening in the Hunter Valley: lock the gate, tootle up the drive and have a 2-metre kangaroo jump on the bonnet, put its legs through the windscreen, swerve and roll the poxy high-centre-of-gravity in-laws’ Mitsubishi 4WD onto its roof (no seatbelt, of course, because you’re only in the sodding drive).
Wake up, brush the glass from your hair, walk up to the house, join the family who had the wit to go home in daylight, and enjoy a nice semillon with dinner. Ah, God’s own country indeed.
No animals (apart from the ’roo, slightly bruised by the look of it) were hurt in the production of this story.
Yours,
Embarrassed of Pokolbin
Well survived, sir! Readers: tell your own roadstrike tales in comments.
Totally OT but following up a previous post:
Forget about your robert bruce
and all the men he’s beaten
the hero of the scottish now
is a man called big John SmeatonThe terrorists they came
to strike fear in our land
but a big man stood before them
a suitcase in each handthe flaming jeep speed onwards
but john was in no doubt
he took a last puff on his fag
and stamped the f*cker outhe saw the police getting punched
he saw it as his duty
the mighty man called smeaton cried
“i’m going to set aboot ye”he took them out in seconds
you should have seen thier faces
big john smiled his work being done
went back to moving casesin the darkest depths of kabul
they know that they were beaten
and they won’t try it with us again
all thanks to big John Smeaton
Twas doon by the inch o’ Abbots
Oor Johnny walked one day
When he saw a sicht that troubled him
Far more that he could say
A fanatic muslim f***er
Wiz doin what he’d planned
And intae Glesca’s departure hall
A Cherokee he’d rammed.
A big Glaswegian polis
Came forward tae assist
He thocht “a wumman driver”
Or at least someone half-pissed
But to his shock nae drunken Jock
Emerged to grasp his hand
But a flamin Arab loony
Frae Al Qaeda’s band
The mad Islamist nut-case
Had set hissel’ on fire
And swung oot at the polis
GBH his clear desire
Now that’s no richt wur Johnny cried
And sallied tae the fray
A left hook and a heid butt
Required tae save the day.
Now listen up Bin Laden
Yir sort’s nae wanted here
For imported English radicals
Us Scoatsman huv nae fear
Oor hame grown Glesca Asians
Will have nae bluidy truck
So tak yer worldwide jihad
An get yersel tae f***(from Mandeigh Wells via The Corner)
Posted by WingDynasty on 2007 07 06 at 02:03 PM • permalinkFlying standby from Cancun to Dallas on a wildly busy travel day, my wife and I had to take a tree-trimmer to Cozumel just to make it out of Mexico. The late connecting flight in Houston put us home about four hours later than anticipated.
We checked the car out of the airport parking lot, and upon reaching roadspeed, nailed a mockingbird with the antenna.
Doesn’t matter what you believe, that bird’s number was up.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 07 06 at 02:10 PM • permalinkFunny, I had not one but two kills just this past week…
On the way home from work, two prairie dogs (damned vermin are so ubiquitous here that the city permits an annual shoot just to cull ‘em) decided to brave the crossing in front of me. First one made it; his wingman didn’t. Sounded like someone stepping on an egg.
Then just two days later…You know how birds always dart low across in front of you and you’re sure you’re going to hit them and you don’t? Well, not always. This one swooped in front of me and just disappeared. Got to the office and there he was, embedded in my grille (My car’s grille, not the kind Ludacris talks about.) Had to get some plastic utensils from the break room to pick him out.
OK, so that’s small-time, but there’s no ‘roos ‘round ‘ere.
Posted by WingDynasty on 2007 07 06 at 02:37 PM • permalinkIt’s not what I hit but what I did not. Every Spring in Minnesota parts we recieve dire pleas not to hit the turtles as they cross roads to lay eggs, or whatever it is they do.
On what would turn out to be the last day I considered myself an environmentalist, I swerved at 65 mph to avoid a smallish painted turtle, turtling across the road. Why? Because it made me feel good about myself.
I missed the turtle, but it took every fiber of my being to keep the car from rolling over as it careened out of control for about 200 feet. Definately not my brightest move.
The bright side? I vowed that day that I would never, ever again swerve to avoid an animal unless the potential for damage to my car was greater than the potential for damage to the animal.
Of course, now I swerve to hit the animals, but that’s a story for another day.
On I95 heading north at night - I overstayed my vacation and was marathoning back from the Florida Keys to D.C. - I hit a deer carcass on the road at about 70 MPH. No big deal, you say? Well, I was on a BMW K1200LT motorcycle. The impact launched us - me and the bike: About 1,000 pounds of combined weight - best as I can tell about three feet off the tarmac. The impact was so severe that it knocked my mirrors off (They were tethered or I’d have lost them) and flat spotted the front rim so badly the bike loped at parking lot speeds. But, I did not go down, and the tires lost no air pressure. I’m really not sure how the grips weren’t torn from my hands, but they wern’t. Wrists were sore though.
That happened in North Carolina, and I got back to D.C. safely. I loved that bike, but alas I can’t have two where I live now, and I like my R1100RS better. Same thing with the RS? I’d probably be typing this with a pencil clenched in my teeth. Eight-hundred pound bikes do have their advantages.
Grew up in N. Houston. I’ve got my share of ‘dillos, and got side-swiped by one of those giant, hooved, white-tailed rats. Stupid thing ran smack into my car above the front wheel well and ended up on the far shoulder. Had a friend w/ a 70-something Nova (in the late ‘90s) who liked to “car hunt”. (run ‘em over, wouldn’t even scratch the bumper) One night he threw a deer in the trunk w/o checking to be sure it was dead. Apparently it went like Tommy Boy only with lots of blood. And wee dents in the roof of his trunk. My life would be far less entertaining w/o rednecks.
Just this past weekend I had my first roadkill ever. A poor little sparrow up in a back road in Maine. Poor thing, bounced off the grill, then the windshield.
I question the timing of this post!
Posted by Not My Problem on 2007 07 06 at 02:57 PM • permalinkI was still a teenager, zipping along at 55mph in the family Subaru. A bird—just a normal songbird—flew out in front of me.
No lying—the car shuddered with the impact.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 07 06 at 03:20 PM • permalinkMine are all strictly birds.
Twice I’ve had birds hit the windshield at 60+ MPH. Happily, the windshields didn’t shatter. One feathered friend hit the window dead on, and bounced straight up. When I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw smacking down onto the pavement.
The third was a male peacock in full plummage. The stupid creature literally walked out in front of me on a country road. I saw it coming, but I had traffic coming towards me, as well as close behind me (and probably couldn’t see the bird). I wasn’t about to take evasive action for this creature.
So I smacked it with my right front tire. There were feathers everywhere.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 07 06 at 03:25 PM • permalinkThis didn’t happen to me, but I witnessed it. I saw a man pick up a large black dead otter by the side of the road next to a water filled mine cut near Mulberry, Florida. He got it half way to his car when he realized that it wasn’t really dead. Believe me, you don’t want to be holding a large pissed-off otter when it comes to.
A few years back I travelled to St. Louis for business. One afternoon my meetings ended earlier than expected, so I drove to Hannibal, Missouri to see the hometown of Mark Twain.
I had a nice day there, although it was a hellish 100 degrees. A large frosted mug of homemade root beer at the Mark Twain Cafe made it especially agreeable.
On my way back to St. Louis I was enjoying a nice early evening drive when I noticed an elderly lady standing beside the road, wringing her hands. I looked over to where she was peering and I noticed a small Jack Russell terrier running on the opposite side of the road. He was running not on the shoulder or the grass but on the road itslef. He was surely destined to be road kill by some Red Man chewing John Deere hat wearing semi truck driver.
Against my better wisdom, I stopped the car and called to the dog. He stopped. I approached the dog slowly saying “nice doggie, nice doggie”. A few feet away, he turned and ran, again staying on the pavement. I ran after him. “Stop, little doggie” I shouted. “You’ll be killed”.
He stopped, obviously having heard me. I approached, relieved that he was finally being sensible. Inches away from petting his beautiful puppy face, he turned and ran. “No, stop, stop” I shouted.
I turned and looked to the elderly lady, she having witnessed it all. I shouted “he doesn’t want to come with me”. But she kept pointing at the dog, pleading without words for me to continue my attempt to extricate the precious canine from his predicament.
“Fuck!”, I uttered under my breath. I decided to give it one last try. I ran a good 20 feet when I came upon a ravine that I can assure you was not small. The dog remained on the road but I wasn’t crazy enough to follow him. If a car or truck came over the bridge, I wouldn’t have any space to avoid being road kill myself.
So I ran down the grassy slope into a bog of water, six inches deep. I trundled through the water in my formerly spit shined Florsheims and Brooks Brother suit pants, swearing all the way. “Why, why am I doing this?”, I asked to no one in particular.
Finally I ascended the far slope, reaching the top when I see the terrier waiting for me, tail all a wagging. I said “Ok, good, just stay still and I’ll take you to your mommy shortly”. Just as I was about to grab hold of him, he turns and runs like Secretariat at the Kentucky Derby. “Fuck you you little shit. I hope you get run over by a convoy of anvil supply trucks!”
Twenty minute it took me to rewalk my path, slowly, coming back to my car. I got in and drove over to the lady. I solemnly and respectfully approached the wizened woman and said “I’m very sorry. I tried hard to get your dog for you. I just couldn’t catch him”.
“Oh, it’s not my dog”, she replied. “I just didn’t want the little precious to get hurt”.
I didn’t say anything. I just got back in my car. And drove. Away.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 07 06 at 03:46 PM • permalinkAbout 20 years ago, I slaughtered a scorpion in our office at a construction site in Northern Peru.
One of mu Peruvian colleagues told me that scorpions mate for life and if you kill one partner the other will follow you to the ends of the earth to get revenge - AND THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 07 06 at 03:48 PM • permalinkDriving in the Hudson Valley with the wife. Hawk enjoying meal of fieldmouse in the middle of the road. “Fly away, stupid hawk, before I hit you”. Hawk picks up meal, flies up and forwards, drops meal as my car reaches him. Mouse-meal lands on the front of the hood with bloody thump, then proceeds to roll up the hood and right up the windshield, trailing visceral effluvia and leaving a rope of intestines straight up the windshield. Me and the wife nearly puked. Then I got the bright idea of hitting the wipers.
Bad move.
Had to look at that mess for 45 minutes until we got home and I could hose it off.
I’ve been lucky…never hit anything bigger than a cat, and that only once (knock, knock.)
Years ago, driving near my house at night, the addle-brained creature dashed across right in front of me. My left front tire hit him, and he went around the wheel well a few times (thumpthumpthumpthumpthump) as silver fur flew up past my window.
I felt bad for a moment, thinking, “That was someone’s pet. Someone loved him.” Then I remembered that I f***ing hate cats, and everything was OK again, like it was before.
Posted by WingDynasty on 2007 07 06 at 03:58 PM • permalink#18 Thanks, Wing - I’ve been waging a lonely struggle to wipe cats from the face of the earth.
I wouldn’t really count taht
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 07 06 at 04:01 PM • permalinkTwenty years old, driving home in my bitchin’ Firebird, a cat runs across and I nail it. I can hear the thump. Look in my rearview mirror and the thing is spazzing out like an epileptic in a blender. Then it takes off at about 100 mph.
When I got home, I checked my front end and found a cat-head-size dent in my front license plate. I’ve always wondered if its owners noticed a radical change of personality in little Mr. Whiskers.
Last one - driving the Maine Turnpike, two in the morning, no moon, middle lane. At the last minute I see a huge, dark mass in the left lane. I pass a moose at 70 mph with about six inches to spare.
Since it’s not a roadstrike, it doesn’t really count. But you don’t write about moose collisions, because you rarely survive one. Probably the closest I’ve come to dying.
I had a farm in Africa…..
Actually Dad had a farm about 400km out of Sydney, and we often used to pop up there for a little weekend farming action - leaving early on Saturday morning and returning late Sunday. One time Dad took us in his brand new Citroen - not sure the model, but it had “five on the tree” and those swivelly headlights that followed the direction of the front wheels.
On Sunday evening, I was just closing the front gate of the farm in the twilight when Dad offered me (a pretty raw driver) to drive his pride and joy - an offer I accepted, and the only surprise left in this story was that I hit a roo before I hit third gear. Did you know that those Citroens were largely aluminium? A gentle hit of a roo folded the left front so that the headlights were pointing skywards, so that for the remaining 399kms to Sydney the swivelly headlight on the left acted as a searchlight sweeping the sky above to remind us of how dumb kangaroos and young drivers are!I have only had two incidents.. minor that they were. A silly bird flew into my windshield. I guess it died…. never saw it in the rear window lying on the road…. probably knocked it back into the woods where it should have stayed. Another time (again back country roads that still exist in Fredneck) I ran over a snake slithering across the road. I didn’t feel bad about that one. I don’t care for things that slither.
I cover 100,000 miles a year, truckin’, so I’ve slain enough wildlife to feed Africa. My favorite was the time I got 3 birds at once. A little flock of 6 or 8 came up from under a bridge and started flying with their backs to me. A cabover Freightliner makes a big birdswatter.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 07 06 at 04:20 PM • permalinkThe roads near my house had stayed the same for the better part of twenty years and I had been driving on them for about five years when they decided to move them around. Suddenly, there were roads in what used to be safe zones for the deer. There are a LOT of deer in my part of Georgia. Sure enough, the first night that road is open, I’m driving home and a deer runs out in front of me. I slam on the brakes, but its too late. There is a horrible THUD and a shape goes flying onto my hood, bounces off, and lands on the side of the road. It was one very big, very dead deer. Three years on and they apparently haven’t learned that it is a dangerous area yet, and I see them jumping across the road all the time still. I’ve come this close | | to hitting about ten more. Stupid deer.
Posted by MikeTheLibrarian on 2007 07 06 at 04:24 PM • permalinkthe poxy high-centre-of-gravity in-laws’ Mitsubishi 4WD
Sounds familiar. Actually, the 2005/2006 Pajeros are lower and really a top off road platform. I drove one through some middle eastern sandy desert last year and didn’t get bogged once, unlike some of the other vehicles I was travelling with.
Posted by Abu Chowdah on 2007 07 06 at 04:24 PM • permalink#23. Missred, the trick to running over snakes is to lock-up the brakes on impact and drag them. Works a treat.
Up near Port Macquarie I had a deer run into the side of my dunny-door. Idiot. Can’t hurt a Holden. Recently ran over a cat’s tail in Wooloomoloo and all I heard was claws scratching furiously on the bitumen.
Years ago had a bee sucked into a Landcruisers open air vent at 110kph and hit me so hard in the foot I scored an instant allergy to bee-stings. Now I’ve got to carry around 1mg of adrenaline at all times, well, supposed to.
Once worked with an idiot who loved animals, a little too much. Travelling up the F3 he passed a wounded bird on the freeway and stopped. In the process of rescuing it a car almost ran him down and wiped-out taking evasive action. The idiot had public liability insurance so no worries, that’s life.
A couple of years ago I visited my farmer friend in the west of New South Wales.
We decided to venture the 50 kilometres into town and get some important supplies (beer, bbq meat).
On the way back home we are hurtling along at about 120 kp/h in his Toyota Landcruiser Sahara and a red kangaroo appears out of nowhere from the long grass on the edge of the road. Even though I’ve hit a number of roos before being predominately a city boy my instant reaction before the impact on the silly animal was to put my hands up in some sort of self protective fashion. Upon impact the kangaroo hit virtually right in the middle of the bullbar and it’s head and neck in what seemed like in slow motion jerked back over the top of the bullbar and sprayed the windscreen with blood.
Instantly I look to my friend who hasn’t budged a millimetre leaning back in his leather seat to convey my “Holy Shit” comment. His reaction though was priceless and gives some idea of the number of roos he hits on a regular basis.
Cool as you like he places his cigarette up to his mouth and takes a drag while using the hand it was in to turn the windscreen wipers on.Posted by Hank Reardon on 2007 07 06 at 04:35 PM • permalinkWell, been in six car wrecks PLUS one that damn near bought the farm. Get that did ya ABC OZ, Mr. Compost damn near bought the farm (total of seven ABC OZ) Yea. ME. Mr. Compost.
No I ain’t telling the “war stories”. Lemme’ just say two things. One, I was taller before the first wreck. Two, I’m amazed that I reached the age that I am.
I used to drive 40 miles a day to work and back, so I’ve done in plenty of birds and one cat. There’s no way to avoid them when they insist on swooping right in front of you. I also hit a bat one night, which left a smear of blood on the windshield. I drove home wondering whose blood it was.
I rear-ended a college student in her stupid junker once, when she stopped in the middle of the street to look for her hairbrush, and I was busy fiddling with my radio. The worst was when I knocked down somebody’s mailbox trying to avoid a guy on a bicycle (hey, the sun was in my eyes). Did a 180 on that one, and it took the bicycler, the guy who owned the mailbox, and my husband (when he got there, spewing like Krakatoa) to get my car out of the ditch.
#21, Dave S., we followed a moose down a road once. It was a young one, or a doe, and it wouldn’t get off the road, and we couldn’t get around it. That’s when I realized people are right when they say moose are stupid.
I’m not really a bad driver, I’ve just been around a long time.
Cats like warm places to sleep. On a winter’s night, if one’s been shut out of the house, the open undercarriage of a ‘60s sedan seems awfully inviting, the engine still ticking with heat.
Mom started the car the next morning and heard a YEEEOWL. Despite Dad’s best efforts at scrubbing down the belts and pulleys, for weeks the engine smelled bad as it warmed up.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 07 06 at 04:48 PM • permalinkTook out a rock dove while driving across the desert. Heard the thump, wondered where it had gotten to—discovered when we got to the campground in Phoenix. There it was, like WD’s victim in #4, stuck in the grille. Not a mark on it, but it was dead as a doornail.
One time, I did rescue a porcupine that had been grazed by a car. Out in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the center line, big raw patch on its rump. We pulled over and got out the shovel (alive or not, we weren’t going to pick up the beast with our bare hands). As soon as the shovel touched its feet, though, the critter scurried away off into the chapparal.
Cats like warm places to sleep. On a winter’s night, if one’s been shut out of the house, the open undercarriage of a ‘60s sedan seems awfully inviting, the engine still ticking with heat.
Apparently, wood chippers are pretty darn tempting, too.
I was driving back to the farm one arvo hooting along a straightaway at 100k when off in one of the cut cane paddocks I noticed some sheila out for a walk with her doberman.
They were a good 300m away and the dog was running around like an idiot’s idiot. As I continued innocently along the mongrel thing decided it was going to interdict my path and did so like an exocet missile.
Thump! Crumple! Howl!
Spash over!
I pulled up and reversed to the poor writhing hound as this wailing flailing sheila arrived on the scene dancing about fantastically.
“He’s buggered” said I “Reckon he had a death wish”.
She looked at me somewhat askance.
“No worries, I’m oright though”.
She threw herself on the carcass and I drove off home thinking…. I hate fucking dobermans.On a happier note. I was driving the cruiser into the RSL on morning with all my kids, missus and a mate. Dressed up to kill for Armistice Day (irony my arse) I was in terrific mood as these days are to me a highlight of the year.
Anyway we were heading on a dirt road through some scrub (city ponces call it rainforest) when I rounded a bend to see a mob of feral pigs crossing the road.
“Struth pigs!” I bellowed as I flattened the accelerator.
The kids squealed as I closed in on the mob and then thump, kriskringle, pop, we eventually clambered over a few of the beasts.
The kids eyes were either hidden in their hands or wide with horror and I came to a screeching halt to survey the damage in the rear view mirror.
That was nothing compared to the cries when I whacked it in reverse and gunned it.
Ah sweet memeories.
‘Twas a bonzer day at the Rissole too.I was on the highway one morning heading to work when I registered a large something flopping in the bar ditch (borrow ditch, if you aren’t from Oklahoma); I stopped to check it out (business suit, nylons and high heels in the bar ditch along with whatever critter it happened to be) and it turned out to be a young redtail hawk which had sustained some degree of damage, enough to be semi-conscious. It was just dazed enough to flop right out onto the roadbed if I left it alone, though, and I had just come back from a canoe trip in Canada and had a full-body bug net in the back of the car so I hauled it out and swaddled the wretched bird in it, slung it in the car with me and proceeded to the office.
Bird in hand—as it were—I dashed to my office snapping to my secretary as I passed (wonderful moment) “Get me the OKC Zoo!” Seconds later she intercommed imperturbably (I loved that woman) “Zoo on Line One,” and I spent five minutes arguing with the raptor folks, explaining that no, I was not about to essay a drive up to the Wild Raptor Center in Noble County (a 3 hour trip) with a thoroughly agitated adult hawk, possession of which just happened to be a major federal offense involving fines and jail time—I’d chance a drive through city traffic to the zoo, nothing more. Grudgingly, O, grudgingly, they allowed as how they’d accept the bird for exam and treatment. So, secretary and I re-swaddle the hawk, which had started to work its way loose, I headed back down the elevator (quite a stir among the early coffee crowd when the hawk screamed) and I moseyed cross-town to the zoo.
Zoo personnel rather bored by the redtail, much struck by the full-body bugnet. They did call, later, to say that they found no broken bones; it had likely been on the ground and stunned by airwash from a truck; they would keep it a day or two and release it back where I found it. Most amazing thing was how incredibly light the bird was—it was a full-grown adult, and felt like it weighed only a few ounces. Swathed in the bugnet, I could barely detect I was holding something other than the weight of the net itself.
#36
”...The kids eyes were either hidden in their hands or wide with horror…”
Good work. Ya’s gotta learn ‘em young ‘bout such realities. Cycle of life, & all.
Posted by WingDynasty on 2007 07 06 at 05:18 PM • permalinkI witnessed a scene one time which, fortunately, did not result in tragedy, but was a hilarious example of chutzpah.
A cement-mixing truck came lumbering around a corner on the main street that runs through my home town. Running alongside of it, parallel with the cab, was a chihuahua, yapping its head off. The driver was laughing so hard he could hardly drive straight, and they both disappeared down the road together. Not sure what the chihuahua was going to do with the thing if he caught it.
This doesn’t count as a road kill, but as we’ve had a cat-in-the-engine-compartment tale in this thread, I guess it’s marginally on topic (have mercy, O Mighty Andrea!):
I once adopted a cat that had ridden all the way from my friend’s house to mine, 10 miles on the freeway, in the engine compartment.
I opened the door that evening to find my friend Sharon holding a half-grown black kitten that was trying to burrow into her arm. My roommate and I named the kitten “Bronco Kitty” (or “B.K.” for short), after the vehicle in which he had stowed away.
That cat was never right in the head. We had a dickens of a time box-training him. (Would you fancy waking up and turning your head on the pillow to get a point-blank view of the business end of a kitten doing his business? *I* sure didn’t…) Good thing the carpet in that place was already cat-poop brown, as we cleaned up enough of it.
I tried to take B.K. with me when I moved out of that apartment, but he couldn’t cope. He spent the first 24 hours under my bed, howling literally non-stop. I didn’t want to let him out on my new balcony (on the second floor—first floor for Aussies et al.—), as I was afraid he would jump off. My boyfriend (now hubby) said, “He’s not going to jump, he’s got better sense than that.” Well, this was B.K. we were talking about… the cat jumped 30 feet straight down to a concrete slab and ran off. We ran outside and looked all over for him, to no avail. In desperation I yelled “B.K.!” at the top of my lungs. A howl of misery answered my cry. There he was, cowering under a bush.
I gave B.K. back to the ex-roomie. Dunno what became of him. Hubby and I love cats, but we don’t miss that one a bit. ;-)
Posted by Mary in LA on 2007 07 06 at 05:32 PM • permalink81Alpha, you’re a magnificent bastard!!!
BUAWHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 07 06 at 05:35 PM • permalinkMy first memory of road kill was having to clean the remains of a Hawk from the front of my Dad’s XE Fairmont Ghia, I remember wondering how what seemed to be the entire mass of the bird managed to be compressed through the gap between the headlight and the grill.
Looking back I recall that those where the days when cops still worried about catching real crims and Dad used to travel everywhere at warp speed, I still remember him waking me up at night after he got home from some far flung business trip to show me the glowing exhaust system.
I had a similar experience to the pokolbin chap in a landcruiser once. Big red roo. I swear he was 7 feet tall before he got re-arranged. But it was a work vehicle. We managed to roll her back over with a rope attached to another landcruiser, belt the roof back up with a crowbar, and drive back home.
Another story:
Went to a double wedding once in Cloncurry: when she heard her sister was getting married the sister of the couple I of which was a guest (a blubber challenged 16 yo who gloried in the name ‘Baby’) decided to marry her 18 yo railway worker boyfriend (who after a big night, looked like a rabbit in a spotlight). The wedding itself is another story.On the way home ( we took a six pack ourselves for the journey, I was about 30 kms out of town and I hit a very small grey roo at about 130 kmh. I had a Kingswood small block HQ V8 station wagon at the time, with no roo bar. The roo squashed the front of the car, bent the radiator in half, and pushed the radiator and fan up over the block and bent the air filter. Could still see through the windscreen though. The kangaroo, while quite dead, looked eerily unharmed.
Anyway, about 15 minutes later the next car came along. It was in fact, the middle brother of the brides, on his way back to Townsville. “No worries, he said, “I can give you a tow to Julia Creek”, which was about 90 km down the road. We found a ten foot tow rope, which we hooked up to his datsun 120y and were on our way.
It was an interesting experience to be closely towed by a 120y at 120 kmh through kangaroo infested country (with no brakes as the engine wouldn’t work), watching the odd roo dodge an empty stubby that would sail out the window of the datsun at regular intervals.Pre-RBT days, obviously. I rebuilt the Kingswood, too, including heavily upgrading the motor. Those were the days.
My wife came in one night ,visibly shaken. ” A deer came out of nowhere and ran into the truck “,says the missus. “Is he dead”, I ask. “Don’t know”, she replies. I grab a .22 just in case he’s not pining for the fjords quite yet. We head back to the scene of carnage. Huge nontypical 11 point buck is lying just off the road , very much alive, but unfortunately suffering from a broken back. I quickly dispatched the poor creature with the aforementioned .22. I field dressed him when we returned home and turned him into steaks and burgers the next day. Alls well that ends well.
Ah, yes, wronwright was an excellent subject for the subsonic mental control device I was working on; very malleable. He performed excellently, and never realized that he was completely under my control.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 07 06 at 06:30 PM • permalinkRiyadh got damn cold in the winter. The area near my compound was home to many cats and quite often one or more would climb up into the engine bay of a parked vehicle to get some warmth.
But, as soon as the engine was started in the morning a tremendous shrieking and howling would come from the engine compartment as the fan belt chewed up the occupant(s) of the bay. In the early morning darkness it never failed to scare the beejesus out of the car’s human occupants.
HRT1009, making it S.O.P. to bang on the hood a few times to roust any random felines might have saved your outfit some messy engine clean-ups… just a thought…
Most of all, though, a sincere thank-you for your service.
Posted by Mary in LA on 2007 07 06 at 07:01 PM • permalinkGreene, I loved your tale of road-kill venison! Y’all Aussies can correct me if I’m wrong, but when vehicular macropodicide is committed, those road-kill ‘roos should be good eating, right? I’m told that the tail meat is particularly choice (never had a chance to try it myself).
Posted by Mary in LA on 2007 07 06 at 07:08 PM • permalinkI nailed three raccoons at once several years ago. I can’t take full credit, though, as I was the second one to hit them - the guy in front of me had already set them spinning when he tagged them at 55 mph. I just finished the job. I’ve also done in assorted birds, bats, and small mammals, while the Husband has taken out two deer with the truck. Nothing very exciting.
I do know a guy who survived a motorcycle-moose collision - the damn bike actually went under the beast. His head bounced off the moose’s abdomen, he was sent flying, and he broke a good percentage of his bones, but somehow he made it. The moose didn’t, though - even those big bastards don’t fare too well when a helmeted head strikes them at high speed in the gut.
I also have a good second-hand roadkill story. A friend of The Husband’s was driving by one of our local lakes when a Canada goose decided to remove itself from the gene pool by launching itself into the air in front of his truck (note to birds - don’t take off in front of trucks - you won’t win). Friend stopped and got out to check for vehicle damage. As he was prodding the bird with his foot, up stormed some bint who had been tossing the geese bread nearby. Between near-hysterical sobs, she laid into Hubby’s friend, calling him a murderer and a beast, and shrieking about the loss of such a Beautiful Creature of Nature. As she’s pitching her fit, up drives another truck. The driver, an old farmer type, got out, looked at Hubby’s friend for a moment, and said, “Hey, you want that?” When he replied no, the farmer said, “OK, I’ll take it - them’s good eatin’,” bent over, picked the thing up by the neck, and slung it into the back of his truck. Nature Girl nearly shit a brick. Hubby’s friend said she actually ran after the farmer’s truck, screaming her bloody fool head off. Sadly, she never caught up with him.
Now for the Greatest Roadkill Incident Ever: this, is just frickin’ impressive.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 07 06 at 07:18 PM • permalinkAn Indian mynah hit the side mirror of my car a few months ago. Completely smashed the mirror, the casing and itself.
Worse though was a few days ago. I was driving along a major road in Sydney when a Huntsman spider about the size of a eight-year-old’s hand scuttled across the windscreen. Turned on the wipers, knocked it off and saw it tumbling along towards the rear of the car. Breathed a sigh of relief, but the rotten thing had held on by a long, spidery thread and, as I slowed down for the lights, it swung itself back in through the driver’s window and grabbed hold of the inside roof just above my head.
Won’t tell you how I almost caused a major accident but thanks to my passenger son - My Hero - that particular example of Aussie wildlife was soon cactus.
I was driving thru the desert a few months ago, and there was a burro standing in the road. I came to a stop. I looked at him and he looked at me. I pulled closer and rolled down the window to get a better look. He walked up and stuck his head full in the car, stared at me for a while, then withdrew and wandered off.
Strange things happen in the desert.
I was driving thru the desert a few months ago, and before I knew it I had smacked right into a roadrunner. I tied him to the hitch on the back of my car, and drove off. A few minutes later, I noticed I was being chased by a coyote on rocket-powered roller skates.
Strange things happen in the desert.
I was fanging back along the Gibb River Road from Bell Gorge in the Kimberley trying to beat the sunset when the cattle come out to stand on the roads. A huge snake slithered across in front of me. I wasn’t stopping or swerving on the gravel and as I was almost on it, it reared up and took a solid hit on my bullbar. When I got back to camp there was a big splotch of clear fluid on the shiny alloy that I wan’t going to touch, so I got my wife to clean it.
We’ve gotten this far with nobody mentioning the menu of the Road Kill Cafe?
Posted by dean martin on 2007 07 06 at 07:49 PM • permalinkOther than the stray dog I hit one night near home, with all three (small, at the time) kids in the back seat, wildlife has been fairly lucky around me. Did sort of get the kids’ attention, what with going over the hound with both right wheels (*thump!* ... *thump!*), followed immediately by the screaming of the dog.
Which, as soon as I jammed on the brakes and got out to see what had happened, jumped up and hared off across the fields, seemingly no worse for the experience. But still screaming.
Didn’t help the kids get to sleep right off.
Other than that, I hit a bee once. #1 daughter and I were off to Yosemite on my BMW K100RT on Sunday, and on the way back on a long downhill stretch into the Central Valley, the bee shot up my right jacket sleeve and struck just below my elbow.
Daughter says I gave a massive twitch, put on the binders (luckily with nobody tailgating me), pulled of the road, told her to get off *now*, hopped off myself and started stripping off…the jacket. Had her worried for a bit.
Could have been a lot worse; a couple I used to know about 35 years ago near Napa were riding at night up Silverado Trail south of St. Helena, when a deer jumped across the road. The Harley caught the deer just behind the head, the body swung back, and they both held up their right hands.
The bike skidded a couple of feet to the side, but didn’t go down, and they found out when they stopped a little down the road that they both had broken wrists, and he had his leg broken.
They were pretty much convinced at the time that the deer had done it on purpose in a fit of mixed rage and depression.
Heading home from work at o-dark-thirty, climbing up Bel Air Road in a fog thicker’n an Age columnist, on my Honda CX500. Just cresting Mulholland when vooooosh, this enormous white owl leaps up off the side of the road brushes my helmet with one huge wing and vanishes into the night…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 07 06 at 08:09 PM • permalinkann j,
I’ve had a similar spider incident myself, only on a motorbike. I was riding along at around 60kph, when I suddenly noticed a large spider making its way along the handlebars. I was wearing a thick jacket and gloves, no exposed flesh and the sensible thing to do would be to simply squash it with my thumb. I think the spider is a wolf spider of some sort - might give a painful bite but not really dangerous. Alas, I found out I’m not a big bad biker after all, but a squealing pathetic he-bitch. I screamed like a castrato, waved my arm frantically, the bike swerved all over the road and it’s a miracle I didn’t crash into something. The spider was understandably upset and disappeared into the bike’s innards. I stopped at the next servo, bought a can of mortein, sprayed it all over the bike and rode home choking on insecticide.
I once hit three Roos in the space of about 20 minutes driving around Wittenoom.
Wittenoom is an abandoned asbestos mining town. The government in its wisdom moved all the people out, but kept the sprinklers in the public places running. Every Roo from miles around comes to get a drink and eat the grass.
BTW, the Roos didn’t even scratch the heavy duty steel bull bar on the front of my 4WD.
The worst road in Australia for Roos must be the road along the Northwest Cape. During the day the Roos hide out in the gorges along the range, then come out in the late afternoon to graze on the coastal area, which requires crossing the road.
Not only are there large numbers (late afternoon you will see literally hundreds), but they have a social trigger mechanism similar to the penguins who wait for one penguin to dive in, before all the rest dive in cos the first penguin didn’t get eaten.
The Roos wait along the side of the road in small groups. When one Roo makes a dash across the road, half a dozen or more will follow.
The driver congratulating himself on missing the Roo that jumped out in front of him, now finds he has to avoid 5 or 6 of the buggers.
I remember the time that a man tried to dump after a long relationship.. after hitting him a few times for his bad timing.. he left me hanging until it was convenient for him.. i tried to run over him with my vw bug.. he managed to survive until he came back a couple years later .. grovelling of course. that’s when he became road kill
Quite a few years ago I was driving from Mt Isa to Townsville in a Toyota 4x4 with a custom bulbar, when a roo jumped out in front of me. After much savage breaking I still managed to hit it, but not very hard as it hopped off at a very rapid rate. Inspecting the damage revealed one of my very expensive new spot lights was totalled.
I was so pissed off I never even took my foot off the accelerator for the rest of the trip and let’s just say that if I was a fighter pilot I could have drawn 4 little roo pictures on the door by the time I arrived in Townsville that night.
There is just no justice as the other spot light survived without a scratch.
Hitting roos (and sheep) is common out west as most of the roads are badly fenced or not fenced at all. The animals to watch out for are cattle and horses. Hitting either at speed is likely to kill you as well.Posted by FreddyFrog on 2007 07 06 at 08:42 PM • permalinkNot an encounter of my own, but ann j’s spider account reminded me of this story.
My best effort was 11 kangaroos in one trip from Willuna to Gasgoine Junction. It started off as deliberately hitting them on the road (much debate about wether a doe and joey in the pouch counted as one or 2 kills) as my old toyota had an extremely impressive chunk of ironmongery on the front of it.
Beer may have been involved.
Some of the fun went out of it when at about roo 7 I managed to pop its guts and spray it up under the air intake for the heaters. Nearly enough to put us off our beers. At about roo 10 I hit a giant bloody thing that rattled every tooth in my head and blew half the bolts and welds in my bullbar. After that I stopped trying to hit them and only got one more for the trip. Managed to equal the team record for roos hit in a trip to a shed anyway.
Managed to hit and kill a few endangered Chuddiches (native cats) and think they were named by the noise they make when they go under your wheels.
Hit a feral piglet and stuck it in a cat trap at my workplace for a laugh once, the manager who was a very proper lady did a double take, nearly fell over and blurted out “Its a fucking pig!” to everybodies great amusement.
Somewhere in cat hell is one of my victims, its eternal damnation consisting of having to tell other cats it was hit by my junker Holden rodeo doing 60kmph.
Also been in a cruiser that hit a cow, still remember seeing the cows legs rolling over and over in front of us. Bloke had whats called a donkey bar on his ute, no damage at all except for some busted spotlights and spilled beer.
Fun days on the shearing team!Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 07 06 at 08:55 PM • permalinkAlmost 19 years ago, myself and a mate were driving from Cloncurry to Julia creek for a bit of extra money (his older brother was a contract roo shooter, and as 16 - 17 year old apprentices with a serious addiction to beer, we needed the cash).
We were in his old HK Monaro, driving across the plains over this narrow two lane (barely) road when we get stuck behind a road train hauling cattle. Being impatient youngsters (and, I’m ashamed to say it) primed with rum, we decided on a 120km per hour passing attempt. Using the flat shoulder of the road.
It was wet season, so the car went into an uncontrolled power slide as soon as we left the road, straight through a barbed wire fence and into a flock of the most unlucky sheep in Australia.
We were then stuck in someone’s paddock, with a half - dozen dead or dying sheep, half cut and pissing ourselves with laughter.
Stopped laughing when we realised that there was a house about 100m away, with one extremely pissed off station owner stalking towards us with a rifle.#74:
if I was a fighter pilot I could have drawn 4 little roo pictures on the door
One more and you’ll be an ace!
I’ve only had a close call. While on my learners I had a dog run out, I panicked, went for the brake but got the accelerator instead. I swear I’ve never seen a dog run so fast as it bolted up the road!
Posted by SouthernCrusader on 2007 07 06 at 09:33 PM • permalink#55 I ran over a wombat about 40 years ago when I was a socialist. I thought I’d done something bad.
Really, cross links to our friends at small dead animals would seem to be very appropriate right now.
If I did links, I would do it. Wimpy??
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 07 06 at 09:34 PM • permalinkit is a lesser known fact that one in three vehicle accidents in Canberra involve kangaroos.
#62 My flatemate was once following a girl in a little laser into Cootamundra one day (I know the girl too, so the story is true) when all of a sudden the car swerved wildly across both sides of the road, then run over the gutter and the girl jumped out, leaving the car to roll on into a fence.
She had flipped down the visor and liberated a huntsman from a peaceful snooze. At least that is her story. My flatmate couldn’t find anything when he did the he-man thing and went looking for it. The car stayed there for days, and the spider was never found.
There’s a reason they put cow-catchers on those old locomotives.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 07 06 at 09:43 PM • permalink#82 entropy
When I was living in Brisvegas a lifetime ago, the girlfriend at the time had a little mini cooper. One day I’m at work and the radio station is doing a traffic report of a car abandoned in the middle of the Normanby 5 ways (major traffic junction in the city). A mini.
Next thing my sergeant yells out that the girlfriend is on the phone crying.
Turns out a big bastard huntsman crawled out of the aircon vent beside her hand, in the middle of peak hour, so she just locked the brakes and jumped out of the car. She then refused to get back into it until the spider was dead.
I felt a right tit talking to the cops when I went to pick up the car and the girlfriend.
I was on spider patrol after that, every f*cking morning before work.Haven’t read all the above yet, but…
First deer I ever saw as a driver I killed good.
Happenned on US6 south/east bound between Provo and Price, Utah, USA circa 1983 on my way home to Albuquerque from Idaho Falls (NAAAAVVVYY TRRAINNIIINNG, sir). Roughly midnight. Had a
homemade rootbeer going in my 1978 Toyota Celica GT.Mowed him down good. Felt bad. Stopped in Price to let the authorities know. To translate into Australian, the response was something like “Don’t worry, mate; happens all the time.”
Glad to see Tim’s “friend” seems to be okay.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 07 06 at 09:51 PM • permalinkI can remember when I was about 8 years old, my dad used to employ me over school holidays, as a stickpicker (ie: when a truckload of gravel or soil would be delivered to the site, we unfortunates would have to drag out all of the tree roots, etc).
One day we’re driving along the road to Chilligoe, and we hit the biggest bastard wedgetail eagle, which shattered the windscreen of the ute and ended up in my lap.
The old boy just reached over, grabbed the carcass, threw it out the window, and continued rolling a smoke, driving with his knees (stubby between the legs) and mumbled something like “Goawngetoutofityaf*ckingc*nt”
I just sat there in shock, covered in glass and blood, and thought “when I grow up I wanna be just like him”.Nailed three deer, one duck and numerous small rodents over time.
The first deer was in SD, after a long road trip from ID. Six pointer left his guts in the SAAB’s headlights. Decided against any kind of barbecue that evening. Totalled the car.
The other two I managed to slow enough that they got up and run off. The duck.. not so much.
Near missed an eagle - that’d broke my heart if I’d hit it. I slammed the breaks and the magnificent bastard rose just above my windshield in time for me to see him upclose and personal.
Those things are my religion, I swear.
FREEDOM.
On subject of critter killin’:
A man and woman are on their honeymoon after a long and very happy courtship. On their honeymoon, they decide to take their horses through the beautiful mountain passes of Europe. As the horses are crossing a small stream, the man’s horse mis-steps and jostles the man’s wife. Once across the stream, the woman dismounts, walks over to the horse, and stares into its eyes. Finally, she states, “That’s one.” The woman remounts her horse and they continue their ride.
A bit further down the path, the man’s horse stumbles when stepping over a fallen tree. The woman dismounts, stares the horse in the eyes, and boldly states, “That’s two!” She returns to her saddle and they move on.
As the afternoon sun begins to set, the man’s horse once again loses its footing on a mossy slope. The woman dismounts, moves to the man’s horse, and helps her husband dismount. Moving to the front of the horse she stares it in the eyes and firmly says, “That’s three,” removes a pistol from her vest, and shoots the horse dead.
The husband, quite upset at seeing the beautiful horse killed, says to his new wife, “That’s terrible, why would you do such a thing!”
The wife stares at her husband and firmly says, “That’s one!”
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 07 06 at 10:19 PM • permalink#51 Entropy:
I once saw a HQ sedan at Miriam Vale, outside a wrecking yard, punched in from the centre of the grille to the firewall, with the 202 red sitting on top of the gearbox on the back seat. No shit.
They had just unloaded it from the tow-truck, and I asked the towie what it had run into (thinking light pole or similar). The answer? “A really big red!”
(Red Kangaroo for our o/s guests).
In my 38 years of driving, I’ve run over most every small critter that roams these parts. At least once.
A couple of the most memorable: a owl that must have weighed 5 pounds. It was a dark and stor….no, another story. But it was really dark. Came over a hill at 60+, and slowly realized there was…something…up there, ahead. About the time I realized what it was, it took off. The wrong way. Right into the corner of my windshield. Amazingly, it didn’t shatter. Someone asked if I turned around and went back to investigate. Hell, no!! If it survived that, it was one tough…and pissed off…bird.
The other was a deer. Running at full speed when it hit me! Caved in the side of the bed on my truck, leaving fur embeded around the edge of the tail light. Then got up and kept going. Over six hundred bucks from one buck.
#92 Ash_
As a matter of fact I did. :)
But he still holds the record for placing the most swearwords in one sentence, said in one breath.
People see old photos of him (black and white) and think it’s me, we both (apparently) talk out of the corner of our mouth, work till we drop, etc.
I talk more than he does though, “Goawngetoutofityaf*ckingc*nt” counts as a conversation for him.
But I think mum taught him to swear properly. :)I’ll bet our lefty greenie overseers are enjoying this thread. It’s probably giving them hives.
I wonder how a Prius hitting a deer or a ‘roo would make out. You’d probably end up with meat prewrapped in foil and ready for the freezer.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 07 06 at 10:50 PM • permalinkFor real ickiness, you can’t beat two charming fellas I grew up with, who would go pigging on their cattle station when we were teens.
If they found piglets, they would put them in their ute, go to town, pull up out front of one of the two pubs (please remember, this was when we could still have a gunrack with rifles, etc, sitting in a fwd with the windows down) and play ‘pig grenades’ with other peoples’ cars.
It got much, much worse when they discovered detonators and fuse cord.
Ever seen a Landcruiser which has had a piglet detonate inside?
And people wonder why those two are in and out of prison now?
Ah, land of my youth. :)#98 kae
In my youth, can’t remember the Kinnears, I can ask dad later tonight when I ring him, though.
We lived all over that area, but mostly around Karumba?
There and down through central Queensland: Anakie, Saphire, Springsure, the ‘Curry, even Dingo, (pop 8).
And mum and dad dragged 5 kids up (somehow) to be responsible adults (well okay, the others are, I might not be).97. 185600
Can’t. stop. laughing.
I live in “redneck central” in West Texas, and MOST of my friends are like that. Most fun new thing to do out here?
Build a bonfire… around a magnesium engine block. Hee, hee. Stand back, drink beer, and wait for the fireworks to scare the girls.
Son of a gun, gonna have big fun…
In 1977 I was stationed in Key West, Florida and lived a few miles up the road on Big Coppitt Key. My landlord was this crazy git who was living off a psych disability payment from ‘Nam. He had a beat-to-crap ‘60 Dodge pickup that he had somehow managed to wedge a 383 MOPAR engine into. We were tearing up some side road on Big Pine Key at 0400, drunk (ok, maybe we were a little stoned too) and hit an alligator. Actually, we not so much hit it as ran over it. It bucked the truck up a couple of feet in the air and blew out three of four tires and the rear window when we landed.
We hit so friggin’ hard that we knocked our heads on the roof (what seatbelts??) and my buddy broke two teeth and I damn near snapped my neck off. It was loud, too.
So we get out to survey the damage (to us and the truck), pop the top on a couple of cold ones and we’re just about to write this off as an excellent experience when we hear this hissing sound. At first I thought it was our last remaining tire about to go, so I stagger back to the back of the truck and much to my surprise, find an 11-foot alligator with a matching pair of Sears RoadHandler tire tracks across his backside. A really pissed 11-foot alligator. I jumped in the pickup bed (where the beer cooler was) and my buddy jumped in the cab and shut the door.
The alligator had lost a foot (leg? claw?) in the kerfuffle and kept crawling around in circles (looking for it, I think). About 40 minutes later, it finally crawled off into the brush.
We waited until the sun came up and humped it back to A1A and hitched home. I don’t think that truck ever ran again.
On a semi-related topic, a couple of months later, I picked up my then girlfriend and now wife at the Miami airport and on the way back to Key West, stopped at Big Pine Key to eat. Just before pulling off A1A, I hit a pelican dead on going 60 mph. It bounced up on the hood and crashed through the windshield. My wife got a small cut on her forehead and the pelican got crushed. She immediately started bitching at me (my wife, not the pelican) saying it was all my fault…she hasn’t shut up since.
Posted by Holden McGroyn on 2007 07 06 at 11:12 PM • permalinkDuck?
Bloke had just been in the annual duck hunting competition. There was a trophy and a $ prize for the biggest duck bagged. He was pretty pleased with himself because he’d managed to bag a duck almost the size of a turkey! He was heading back toward the town where the competition weigh in was held.
Up ahead, on the road, he saw a young woman, quite an attractive young woman. She was just gorgeous, with long, blonde hair and legs that just didn’t stop. She was hitchhiking.
He stopped to see if he could give her a lift. She got into the car and they began talking.
He told her he’d been in this big duck hunt and he’d probably win the competition with the duck he’d bagged. It was in the back of the car if she wanted to look at it. She turned around and exclaimed that it was an amazing bird. She said that she was traveling to visit friends and didn’t have anything to give them, as they had almost everything that they needed, however such a duck was a prize and she would really like to buy it from him and take it to her friends.
He was a bit taken aback, he wanted to win that competition. She begged him to sell her the duck. Finally he told her that he wouldn’t sell the duck to her. She said, how about you give me the duck for a bit of horizontal hanky-panky? He agreed. They got it on and he told her the duck was hers. It was very good, they both enjoyed themselves immensely.
Further down the road the young woman seemed a bit distant. He asked what was wrong. She said that she’d had such a good time, she’d like to do it again, and he could have the duck back. He agreed. It was the best he’d had.
Later still in the journey the hunter realized that he had a flat tyre. He stopped at the side of the road and unloaded the car, the spare was under the duck and stuff in the back.
As he’s changing the tyre a huge truck appears and pulls off the road, accidentally running over the duck. The hunter is terribly upset. The truck driver is very apologetic, but he was distracted by the young woman. He offers the hunter $50 for the damaged duck, in compensation. The hunter agrees.
Eventually, very late, the hunter arrives at the weigh in. All his fellow duck hunters are shocked that he’s so late and that he’s in a bit of a state.
One of his mates asked him what happened to his duck?
He tells them “Well, to cut a long story short, I got a fuck for a duck, a duck for a fuck and fifty bucks for a fucked-up-duck.”
Okay, now this is a sad tale of underage alcohol abuse, but it still must be told.
One day myself and two mates, all apprentices, went dragnetting on the Bynoe river (croc infested, naturally) for fresh water prawns.
Anyhow, we end up near sunset, eating prawns and drinking beer by the riverbank, just a perfect day in the north.
Then this little 6 foot freshie wanders under our truck?
We never even saw him until we reversed over him, and there he was, twisting and rolling around. So I got out and slung it in the back.
My mate has this idea about using the skin, so he cuts the head off when we get to his house, and skins the thing.
We’re sitting around the kitchen table with the head in the middle, and my d*ckhead mate is ashing his cigarette in the croc head’s mouth.
He then stubs it out, in it’s lower jaw. Because it’s built the way it is, the jaw snaps shut on his hand, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t get it to budge, he’s drunk and screaming, we’re drunk and laughing.
The look on the faces of the nurses at the local hospital when we took him in with a croc head attached to his hand (up to the wrist) was just priceless.#106 Ash_
I can’t stop smiling when I think of it, and when I get the chance to catch up with those guys (every few years, I don’t get up that way much anymore - town dog now) we still laugh about it. He still has scars from it. :)
Of course, that was my youth, I haven’t fished for barramundi using that renowned fishing tool, three sticks of geli, for years.
I miss it a bit, and am thinking of giving up this shtick and taking a posting back to Townsville to be near the family.
I don’t think I was meant to live in a city, really. :)“Sweet Revenge” story;
One evening many moons ago, someone who looked a bit like me was picked up by the Military Police in a barracks town for being out of uniform, drunk and disorderly, etc. and deposited in the back of the paddy wagon. On the way back to the barracks gaol, the MP wagon ran over a huge King Brown snake, which got tangled up in the engine bay.
The MP’s, being renowned for their superior intellect, stopped to have a look, and when one opened up the bonnet, the severely pissed off King Brown reared up and bit the MP right on the face.
Lights and siren run to the base hospital, all thoughts of locking up the drunken digger in the back were abandoned.
Allegedly, the snakebitten MP did not take kindly to their prisoner’s suggestion to “tie a tourniquet around your neck”.
(Remember the prisoner only looked like me.)Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 07 06 at 11:41 PM • permalink#110 Ash_
Can you believe some fools actually use lines and hooks? Takes up bloody hours of precious beer drinking time. :)
After growing up in some of those places though, I can say it was worth it, one of my favourite photos has 5 of us, none older than 17, standing by a ute in a dry billabong around the most unlucky pig in Queensland.
And showing the most flagrant disregard for firearms safety in history.I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this story, but here goes.
A bloke was well known for allowing his dog to sit in the front seat of his ute, rather than travelling in the tray like all other working dogs. One day, he turns up in town and the dog isn’t in the front seat with him.
“Where’s the dog?” He’s asked.
“At home. Won’t get in the ute.”
“Why not?”
“We’re coming home the other night, when this big parrot hits the windscreen on the passenger side. The windscreen shattered and the dog got a parrot in the face”.
“Nasty.”
“That’s not the half of it. I was a bit slack about replacing the windscreen, so for a week I drove around wearing a motorbike helmet and the dog sat there going all squinty eyed.”
“So?”
“Another bloody parrot came in the front and hit the dog fair in the face again. Cost him a couple of teeth. Poor bastard won’t go near the ute anymore.”
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 07 07 at 12:08 AM • permalink#112 Mr Creosote
LMAO
I was driving to Mt Isa from Normanton (about 400Kms) when the windscreen shattered from a rock thrown up by a road train.
Rather than go home and get it fixed (we were going to a rodeo, and wanted to get there early to set up our swags) we just kept going.
We had my mate’s little sister’s swimming goggles (a fetching little pink pair) and a set of welding goggles.
Naturally I got the swimming goggles, and my mate who was driving got the welding goggles.
Scariest drive of my life, having to say, “can you see the cow on the road up ahead?”
“what f*cking cow? Oh F*ck”
I laugh now, but Jeez. :)At one stage I was very enthusiastic about getting into pig shooting. I was about to head down to townsville to hevaily invest in a a couple of choice weapons, but went out shooting the weekend before on the mitchell grass downs near Julia Creek. Anyway, the boys had had a skinful and we were standing on the tray of the landcruiser, when a feral pig ran across the track. The driver, well and truly pissed, took off across the downs to try and run it over (Mitchell grass downs consist of this cracking clay that leaves high hummocks all over the place - very very rough). At this stage us on the back started to panic. It was all we could do to hang on. I had dreadful visions of someone’s gun going off in somebody else’s face or rolling over. Never went pig shooting with them again.
#114 entropy
My worst was roo shooting for my mate’s brother, as the youngest, my job was to jump off the truck with a tyre iron and grab the shot roo by the tail and crack it’s neck, to make sure it was dead.
They shot a big old buck one night, I jumped off, grabbed his tail, and he just took off.
With me clinging to his tail and swinging the tyre iron wildly, for about half a K, before one of the more enthusiastic (ie: drunk) shooters decided to put a .223 into it’s head. About 4 inches from mine.
I walked back to that truck, snatched his rifle off him and broke his nose with it.
I don’t mind a bit of fun, but that was bloody dangerous. Never shot with those boys again.
But as a sidenote, I did get caught in the back of a ute with that fellas’ sister after a B&S later that year.#120 Ash_
Lets put it this way, I joined the Army pretty soon after. :)
Although apparently a couple of years later she had a child and named her daughter after me (in the states my name is a girl’s name? WTF?).
But that was a fun B&S, someone who didn’t like the music ran his ute into the fence (dead roo strapped to the bullbar).
This was almost 18 years ago, and yet, seems like yesterday to me. :)#122 Ash_
Pretty safe she isn’t mine, the two year gap and all, although if you ask my mum, we can get a girl pregnant by looking at them. :)
Bail? Never been arrested for anything serious (does being drunk and slapping a cop with a thong you found in Brisbane mall count?)
Love B&Ss;, Tim needs to do a thread on them, and our overseas friends can talk about their proms, which I think are kind of like it (without the punchups and the ‘What the f*ck? Get out of that ute / swag !” yelled at impressionable young ladies and their slightly less impressionable young beaus.Remember this:
Ash I’ll see your snake and raise you two trucks?
Well, I did buy a powerball ticket for that night. The prize was $9M.
I WON.
Yeah. Eleven bucks.
I guess I didn’t use up ALL the luck with the trucks.
#123 185600:
...we can get a girl pregnant by looking at them.
NOW you tell me!
Anyone who slaps a cop with a great Aussie icon deserves my respect. Raises glass of OJ to 185600 in a toast
To 185600!
I’m pretty sure our overseas friends get to have the punchups at the after-parties.
The amount of times I’ve heard “What the f*ck? Get out of that ute!” is shamefully embarrassing. But I’m sure at least half the time it was me yelling it.
#125 Ash_
Wasn’t my fault, drunken mate and I, all of 21, are sitting in the mall after a refined evening in the ‘Kindergarten’ (ie: Wintergarden nightclub), when he notices a pair of thongs on the ground, picks one up and slaps me in the face. Naturally I pick up the other and a rolling on the ground slapfest ensues.
That poor cop just got in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the worst was the military charges we copped for it. :)
PS: I hope all is well with my future legal defence?Legendary Geelong Advertiser photographer Geoff Spedding was assigned to a district farm one day to photograph the Australian champion sheep dog.
As he was motoring up the farm drive, a couple of kelpies, as is their wont, came bounding across the paddock to chase his car. One hit the dog brakes a little late, slid under Geoff’s front wheel and died instantly.
Geoff never did get his picture. The dead dog was the Australian champ.OK, here is a roo story I can vouch for.
Me and a mate are heading for a B&S about 400km out of Perth. About 100km out of Perth, we hit a roo smack bang in the middle of the grill. No roo bar.
The grill ends up in the radiator, and the radiator ends up in the fan. The bonnet, bumper and entire front end are pushed in about six inches.
We hop out. The Big T finishes off the roo with the wheel brace. It had gone clean under the car, which was pretty low to the ground, and smeared itself all over the bottom of the car, exhaust and gearbox. Car stunk of burning roo for a year after that everytime I started it up.
The front end looks hopeless. Coolant is leaking everywhere. But the Big T just grabs the front of the car and starts pulling. I join in. We brace our feet against the sump and pull like hell. We get the bumper and front end out enough for the radiator to stop colliding with the fan. The bonnet gets tied down with a bit of fencing wire. We scrounge a 20 litre plastic chemical drum, fill it with water from the side of the road (it had been raining), top up the radiator and continue on our way.
Did I mention that we were wearing dinner suits at the time?
Every 20km, we look for a dam close to the road, stop, jump the fence and top up the radiator. For 300km.
We made it in good time. Got totally hammered. It’s amazing the strength you can find when you are desperate to get to a B&S.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 07 07 at 04:09 AM • permalinkSome years ago I lived in Nairobi, Kenya. We used to to drive down to Mombassa for the weekend to enjoy the coast. The highway from Nairobi to Mombassa runs through several game parks and all types of
wildlife wander freely across the road. During my time, one of the Government ministers in a hurry to get to a meeting in Mombassa, hit a giraffe on the road. He died, the merc was badly damaged, but the giraffe survived. I almost had a similar experience. Speeding on the highway, I turned a corner to find a lone bull elephant standing in the middle of the road. I screeched to a halt. This didn’t seem to alarm the elephant which just stood there impassively looking at me. I backed up a little and waited. There was no way to go round it,and since bulls can get nasty, it wasn’t worth trying, any way. I was also sweating on another driver coming round the corner and ramming up my arse, which might also set the elephant off. We must have eyeballed each other for about 15 minutes, before he ambled off into the bush, having proved his superiority. I drove on to Mombassa, shaken and a bit more cautious.I was heading to a job in Charleville in a rented Toyota Tarago when we saw something on the road ahead, not moving. Couldn’t avoid it because of oncoming traffic, and hit a dead wombat. It did damage to the underside of the Tarago but it had already been flattened by whatever killed it.
The worst part of it was the stench. The Toyota Dealership weren’t too happy the next day either. They were gagging while working
I fixed your link, kae—you must have put a paragraph or line break inside the link.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 07 07 at 07:51 AM • permalinkMy Guard outfit was practicing river crossing drills, basically, picking up a 400-lb RB15 inflatable and charging screaming toward the river.
My detachment grabs, heaves, screams, charges—and a nesting swan rears up out of the reeds with a hiss, leaps into the boat, and begins laying about in all directions. Fortunately, there is no evidence the Russians ever developed this tactic.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 07 07 at 12:04 PM • permalinkStrewth I hope that I remembered that right.
You did good, kae. But when time I heard it, the hero was a farmboy escorting a prize duck to another farm, the femme fatale was a farmer’s wife, and the truck driver was a second lieutenant in the Army driving a tank.
Yes, I heard it in the Army a long time ago. Why do you ask? ;-P
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 07 07 at 12:34 PM • permalinkHere’s a sort of road kill story that I can’t vouch for, but it was making the rounds when I was in college in South Dakota….
A delivery truck was driving through Custer State Park in western South Dakota, and came up to a herd of bison (AKA “buffalo”). There was no way around them, so the driver had to wait. However, he grew impatient, and honked his horn.
Now, anyone who has ever been up close to a bison (and I have, on several occasions), and has even a modicum of common sense, realizes one thing: Don’t piss these critters off! At best, the bison tolerates the presence of humans. At best.
Well, the horn honking didn’t bother the bison. So the driver, in his infinite wisdom, eased his truck up and nudged the bison with his bumper.
Did I mention that bison can be quite dangerous when threatened? Well, they are. As this driver found out.
He survived the ordeal, but his truck didn’t. That one bison (a bull, IIRC) started bashing the truck (a light delivery vehicle, or maybe a van), and eventually pushed it on its side. The driver ended up sitting on top until park rangers came along. At that point, either the bison had enough fun and left voluntarily, or the rangers chased them off somehow (the story was unclear on that point).
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 07 07 at 01:01 PM • permalinkAfter a fatality and a few injuries from hitting vultures at 140 mph, racers in the Mexican Carrera Panamericana started putting ‘roo bars over the windshield.
The most graceful solution is on a Mercedes 300 SLR preserved in their museum.
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 07 07 at 02:12 PM • permalinkKae - if you are hitting cyclists in lycra in Perth then I might be one of your trophies - been hit twice.
If you hit a roo in a Leopard Tank you don’t feel a thing (even if you hit a small car you don’t feel it!) but the running gear stinks until you get to hose it down.
Friends driving from the Ville to Melbourne on posting - wife driving at about 2am with hubby alseep. Hit a cow just north of Seymour. Wife, startled says “what was that?” Hubby says “Well, it wasn’t a cat.” Apparently it dented every panel of the car.
My Gawd, these are great stories! Thank you! I think I hit a fox north of my hometown once. If so, I didn’t hurt it much, cuz it didn’t stick around long.
We moved to southern New Mexico when I was 16. Out for the traditional Sunday drive, I was nearly asleep in the back seat when I heard “thump thump.” I asked my dad what that was - he answered “Spider.” I informed him that no spider would make that sound when you run over it, they’re little, dontchaknow? He turned around, we went back & there crossing the road were dozens of tarantulas, about the size of a dinner plate. My family calls me when there’s a roach, centipede, scorpion, bee or spider, but these things would make me think twice about how tough I am.
Ash_, my daughter’s about 23 weeks along, feeling pretty good, how are you doing with your little darlin? My grandbaby seems to be partial to ice cream sandwiches…just like her mama!
Paco—After about five seconds there wasn’t anybody present with the RB15…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 07 08 at 01:24 PM • permalinkTry this story for a laugh…a guy on a bike gets attacked by a squirrel
Posted by KevGillett on 2007 07 08 at 09:00 PM • permalinkMy daughter ran over a wombat near Mt Buller. It was pretty tightly wedged but she managed to scrape out most of it with a shovel. Couple of weeks later she was at a bush picnic race meeting and every dog in the place was scrapping to get under her car to get a nibble of manifold-grilled wombie steak. Mmmmm…wombat!
I had a close encounter with a goanna on the Newell Highway when driving home from Toowoomba to Parkes on a semester break from uni twenty years ago. I was travelling convoy with another student who came from Forbes, he was driving behind me. We were between Narrabri and Coonabarabran, where the highway cuts through the Pilliga Scrub, when this huge goanna ran out of the trees right in front of me. My mate told me that the goanna was so long that the right front tyre of my Mitsubishi Sigma decapitated it and the left front tyre cut off the tail. I didn’t have much time to react, I could only look in the mirror and see the carcass cartwheeling under my mate’s Ford Escort. Fortunately there was no damage to either car.
#82
it is a lesser known fact that one in three vehicle accidents in Canberra involve kangaroos.
That doesn’t surprise me judging by the number of roo carcasses beside Lanyon Drive near Hume.
As a fanatical skier I always smile when I drive past the sign on the Monaro Highway at Hume with the big silhouette of a roo with the “high accident area” warning, as someone has used black tape to give the roo a set of skis and poles.
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Sounds like the plot of a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Yikes!