Pheasant Plucker

Bird Strike


At Farringdon, there's the Pheasant Plucker pub. I stopped there once when I blew Ka's Omega up overtaking through the entry to East Tisted; I just managed to limp the thing to the pub before the temperature gauge exploded. It seemed the thing to do.

Anyway, the pub stop was an excellent distraction from an otherwise piss-poor commute. The Green Flagged geezer from a garage out at Pertersfield said I was lucky the car was not immediately repairable as after two pints of Real Ale there was no way I could drive either legally, or not.

This morning I was approaching Farringdon behind a slow motor and waited an overly long time for an opportunity to overtake as the surface was post-frost greasy and I'd lost some confidence in the traction across white lines and studs earlier. The road's straight for about 400m - it's an easy and safe overtake at the 50mph we were doing and still safe if you're going a hell of a lot faster (I expect). I gently eased Shadowfax's throttle and lazily pulled around the obstruction - just then a very slender hen pheasant ran out from right to centre right in front of us. Worried the car would make some mad swerve to miss the bird I slowed on the brakes; the car slowed a tad, too - looking for an out as I'd blocked the obvious escape route.

Good looking, if stupid chick

The bird could have stopped doing the Penelope Pitstop: in fact, a Road-Runner sudden arrest would have saved its life between the car and us. However, for some insane reason (perhaps the racing instinct) it put its beak down and went to outrun the car. This was a shame as it proved counter productive. The impact wasn't full on but lifted the creature up the car's wing. It would easily survive a quick spin in the car's wake and I gave it a thorough stare in its wide brown eyes (it was now just a meter from my own swede) and I smiled reassuringly at it. It seemed to calm down a little and begin to descend. Unfortunately the car's wing mirror now caught the thing by its wing and lots of feathers flew around indicating I had just been very wrong about its imminent fate.

In the rear view mirror a near-naked bird lay invitingly in the road, twitching in wait of a finishing salvo of tyres beneath a pretty storm of down. Sized about the scale of something that would fit in the pannier and just 3 weeks to Christmas there was a temptation to pull over and go pick it up as spoils but time was against me and I abandoned the idea. The car stopped though; fair one, mate. Enjoy.

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