Coming down a wide & fast A road near me, I came over a hill & into a dip.

It was a sunny evening but the sun was low behind me casting an orange glow into the dip.

Speed 65-70 (indicated ) I suddenly saw a stationary Partridge in the middle of the road about 20 yards hence

F'n thing didn't twitch & I hadn't a choice right or left or brake

5ft from the stupid bird it suddenly went VTOL

<B>SPLAT!</B>

Bird, blood, guts, feathers, gore everywhere over the w'screen

Pulled over to the side of the road & checked the car... Apart from lots of blood & weathers & **** everywhere, the f'n bird had broken my bumper & buggered the headlight fixings, so that it flopped around out of its socket

Only good part of this episode is that it wasn't PTMW! only the Vectra

 

Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that it wasnt a Chinese Fighter???????????

Could you please land on the Isle of Wight until your wife apologises!!

Pete

 

lol @PS lewis

 

One of the least enjoyable aspects of Scooby ownership is removing animals/birds that have got wedged in to the front air intake between the number plate and radiator...yuk.

 

What was David Cassidy doing in the middle of the road???

mb

 

A Vectra? Off the road? Best thing for it!

Kidding(not), glad nothing bad happened to yourself.

Nick

 

Sorry to hear that Puff... sorry but LOL

 

So was it Partridge for dinner tonight ?

Richard

 

Also glad you're OK , PTMW. I saw a similar thing at Croft circuit a few years ago, this time the car was a TVR Tuscan race car ( they also sound fantastic ) and a big dirty crow ! TVR coming onto straight approaching said crow who must have been used to more normal road speeds, not that of a race tuned Tuscan (capable of 190 mph in the right circumstances) The crow did also did a VTO and went straight through the fibreglass bodywork . It ended up 'terminally inconvienienced' and chipped on the radiator.Luckily it was slow enough to have missed the drivers head /crash helmet visor. The consequences could have been so much worse....

 

Few years ago, driving home on unlit motorway @ approx 1:00am got a dirty great leaf caught in my drivers-side wiper.

Put the wipers on to try and effect removal - then noticed that the leaf was bleeding.....

'twas a little bat ~ obviously without rear-facing radar. Quite upset by this - could not face manual removal - ended up with wipers @ full speed, and 110mph before the poor thing came off due to buffetting.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by BT52:
<B> Yes, apparantly I would have been in trouble if I had put the deer in the boot (doubt it would have fitted anyway).

Always eat venison where possible now, out of principle.[/quote]


But PTMW! would have room to pick up a splatted deer.......wagons have their uses LOL

 

Puff!

If it had been a boy on a bike instead of a partridge, would you still have hit it?

Brian

 

Of course he wouldn't have..

But my rule is NEVER to serve or extreme brake for small animals.. Way too dangerous..

Once you do anything can and usually does happen..

Richard

 

Richard - "serve" - freudian slip.....you were thinking about roasting the poor little thing, weren't you....

 

James

LOL

Also living in a rural area (not far from you, as you know), my wildlife count over the years has been pretty impressive.....

Pheasants are known as being the dumbest birds on the planet. Not only do the male ones look ridiculous (a bit like the Lily Savage of the bird world) but their suicidal tendencies are legendary. They will pretend you do not exist as you approach, gently stroll out of the way, then when you are 20 yds away they do a 180 straight back towards you.......get the big casserole dish out

Pigeons (another legendary small brained bird) make a very spectacular explosion when you hit them - when you look in your rear view mirror there is a beautiful display of feather confetti drifting on to the road......
Harvest time round here is a nightmare - every bend you go round there are 500 pigeons on the road hoovering up the spilt grain from the grain trucks - and of course the greedy little gits have exceeded their maximum take off weight.....

(My Scoob has destroyed far more wildlife round here than my shotgun ever will )

I wonder why Mrs T-S always lets me lead in my car when we set off in the morning.....

But this was nothing to the time a couple of years ago when I came round a blind bend at about 6am, semi dark, on autopilot, and there was an extremely large sow standing in the middle of the road - yum yum, bacon sarnies, get the ketchup out.....

 

PS - I bet it was the bit of road up from Six Mile Bottom........

 

I'm with Richard on this one, never swerve to avoid an animal, no matter how cute it is. Two years ago a friend of mine swerved to avoid a squirrel coming up to a blind bend and had a head-on with another car. Both were doing in the region of 50 so it was pretty messy. He was lucky not to lose his legs! To this day though no one knows what happened to the squirrel.

Adam

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Puff The Magic Wagon!:
the f'n bird had broken my bumper & buggered the headlight fixings, so that it flopped around out of its socket

Puff,
I don't mean this to be the start of a long debate, but: I would regard myself as an animal lover, and on the few occasions when I have struck one of our furry or feathered friends in the road I've felt absolutely devastated afterwards. I think a little more respect for the loss of life is called for. Sorry if anyone thinks that's poncy or girlie.

I completely agree with rsquire and others, who say that its probably safer NOT to change direction in these circumstances, but the bird had committed no crime, did not understand road traffic law, IS stupid (by our standards, although sometimes I wonder) and probably didn't intend to damage your bumper in the way that it did. At least you can get your bumper fixed.

btw - Puff, I'm genuinely glad that you came out of it unscathed

cheers
Andrew

 

I had a Robin fly out in front of me last year - you know the type of buzz small birds seem to get by flitting out the bush at the last minute and missing you by the smallest amount possible... sort of playing 'chicken' I guess (doh).

anyhoo I forgot about the near miss thinking it had gone bobbing along or whatever when the morning after, getting the car out on the the drive, I noticed the rear half of a said robin..sticking (rather comically it must be said) out the grill...

does anyone else have a brightly coloured car (mines yellow) and seem to have more of their fair share of kamikaze-wildlife-from-a-hedgerow-near-you incidents - I'm really beginning to think it scares them into a suicidal dash... in the <B>wrong</B> direction

 

Pffff wimps! Moaning about birds!
You want to try hitting a REAL animal like a huge great red deer!

Now THAT makes a mess. I needed new front end, thats bonnet, both wings, entire grill, front spoiler, new headlamps, foglights, radiator and windscreen wipers(!).

Basically I went over a crest doing about 75 and there was a damn great HERD of them in the road. Didn't bother braking but tried to steer my way through them instead. Nearly worked, but the last one jumped right in front of me.

Was lucky I was in my 306 and not the Elise otherwise it might have taken my head off.

 

Did anyone see the clip of Eddie Irvine reducing the Silverstone hare count by one at 180MPH? Instant hare soup

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Dave T-S:
<B>- yum yum, bacon sarnies, get the ketchup out..... [/quote]

No.... Everyone knows it's HP brown sauce with bacon

andrew6321

Agree with your statments. I've only had one bird stuck in the front grill (after I thought I'd missed it). Was not plesant pulling it out...

<B>N</B><I>i</I><B>m</B><I>B</I><B>u<I>S</B></I>

 

As far as I know, if you run over a pheasant and kill it, you can't take it home and cook it. Don't ask me why, but that's what I've been told.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by DavidRB:
<B>As far as I know, if you run over a pheasant and kill it, you can't take it home and cook it. Don't ask me why, but that's what I've been told.[/quote]

Yes, apparantly I would have been in trouble if I had put the deer in the boot (doubt it would have fitted anyway).

Always eat venison where possible now, out of principle.

 

Isn't it that by law, you cannot pick up roadkill that you killed but the car behind you can or something ?

I've also had the suicide hare from hell. Blatting down a taxiway at about 90 early one morning (work stuff) and a hare thought it might be a good idea to stand its ground. It lost But not before causing nearly £500 of damage to my Audi (Fog light, front spoiler, centre exhaust section, rear diffuser thingy)

But the worse thing was because it was an active airfield (with jets) I had to go back and scoop its remains into a bin bag so it wasn't a FOD risk to the jets. Not nice.

Cheers

Ian

 

GP,

I also had to remove a Robin from my front lower grill at the weekend!

PTMW,

Glad it was the Vectra....

 

No-one else hit anything big? Cow, horse, elephant ...?

Good thing is that insurance companies have told me that it doesn't affect my quote (except for the reduced NCB of course. Cost over £2500 to fix).

 

**** Some may find the following a little tasteless - you have been warned ****

CHF4'000 was the cost to rectify damage done by a fox deciding to peer into my front scoop......damn thing should have waited until I'd stopped, rather than charging out of the field into my path at 140kph!

That's the 2nd time I've seen the dog with it's head stuck in the front dam of the car - the first time he came out with a sparrow, this time he was just cleaning up

Richard

 

Puff! Partridges are out of season you naughty boy.

G

 

I hit a bird on the autoroute - but i was on a motorbike doing about 140mph!! Hit me straight on the bottom of the visor. Splatted blood and guts over the whole helmet - i could even taste it!!!

When i stopped the things leg was stuck in the front ventillation whole. How i stayed on i have no idea - its like being hit by a brick!! Wham!!! Glad it wasnt a pheasant!!

Jza