Damm Birds

[Chaosandconfusion]

Well got my bike fixed and prepped over the weekend and went for a ride.  I was seriously enjoying how well the throttle was working, that I decided to take the paved back roads.  As I was coming around a smooth corner, I caught the sight of something out of my left side, heard a bang, tighten up and slow down. 

There was just some wet pink stuff on my windshield; I thought something fell from the trees or some jerk threw a fruit at me while I was driving.  So I turning the bike around and was ready to whoop-some-butt.     I didn’t see anybody, probably because I was out in the middle of nowhere. 

A few hours later I was riding down the road and saw one of those big ugly turkey vultures and noticed how slow it took to fly away.    Like an over-loaded C-130.  I realized I must have not seen the bird around the corner and barely hit it when it was trying to fly away.   In a way I felt a little better that it was a bird, but Damm Birds. 

There is so much road kill around here that you always have to be looking out for those about to be squashed and those already squashed. And then those Damm bird who like to eat in the middle of the road. 

[Jess from VA]

We have the same roadkill and same turkey vultures everywhere in VA.  Then there are the regular wild turkeys, who love to hang out in groups near rural roadsides..... so they can get all excited and do low level takeoffs in front of you as you motor by.  That or walk a dozen young across the road in traffic... which happened on they way down the BRP to Meet in the Middle.

Still, vultures, turkeys and other flying varmints beat the hell out of deer and soccer moms on the cell phone. Pick your poison.

[Thunderbolt]

Glad you got it going.  Yeah you gotta watch them turkeys.

[R J]

I also had an eye opener today.   Actually scared the crap out of me.

Took the Chevy Trike out for a quick run up to my Brothers.    Got about 5 miles up the bypass and there must have been 300 or 400 sparrows in this cluster that swooped down.     Don't know if they were planning on landing on the road or the ditch.

Al I heard was a big bunch of splats.

Turned around to head for the nearest car wash.    Got in there and the operator came into my stall before I could get out and he said, sorry sir, but you will have to take all those bird carcasses out of your radiator and off the front of your rig before you can use our car wash.        He told me I could go to the rear of the lot and dump them in a blue plastic barrel back there.     After I had counted 25 birds, I gave up and continued to remove some more.      My electric fan that sets on the front of the radiator has 9 birds in it.

Got them all removed and then it took almost $10.00 to get all the rest of the dunk off the front of the body (barndoor) and windshield.        Hope I don't do that again.

[John Schmidt]

Pheasants take off low also, but are quite fast about it. As a kid riding down this country road in Iowa, one took off from a ditch to my right and flew across directly in front of me. I had an old homemade plastic windshield "engineered" onto my old beater and I hit that thing with the top half. Broke if off clean. I got plastic, blood, feathers, and bird crap in my face and mouth. I checked, he was dead so tied him on the back fender and we had him for dinner the next evening. At least we didn't have to check him for shotgun pellets as usual.

The black eye I got out of it took a couple days to clear up.