I live in an area of Perth known simply as “The Hills”
It is a range of hills that surrounds the city not dissimilar to the Hollywood Hills in LA. However my hills are peppered with national forests, water catchment areas, orchards and wineries. All of this nature brings with it an abundance of wildlife at levels not seen down on the suburban “flats”.
One night I was driving home from work and suddenly this big brown speckled mass of feathers flew into my windscreen, creating a gigantic THUD! and then disappeared.
I started to freak out. I turned around to look for any beings lying on the side of the road but there was nothing. My mind started to wonder what it could have been that I hit.
This may come to no surprise to many of you, but I have a bit of supernatural paranoia when it comes to driving through rural forest areas in the dark. I think that ghosts are going to pop out, aliens are going to land and crazed murders with hooks for hands are going bounce my severed head against the car roof.
Naturally my first instinct was one of fear.
“Oh my god, I just hit the Mothman! I just set off a prophecy. I don’t even have a signal on my phone to tell everyone I love them before I die!!!”
When I pulled my self together I deduced that it was not the Mothman, but was in fact a Kookaburra.
Yes, I just killed a Kookaburra. The guilt set in and I wished it was actually the Mothman.
A few days later, Stuart and I were driving home around midnight, going at full speed (90 km/h) I turned a bend and there were three kangaroos lined up across the road. Papa, Mama and Baby, in that order.
There was a slight space in between Papa Roo and Mama Roo, so I slammed on my breaks and aimed for that space, however Mama Roo kept bouncing forward and the space grew smaller and before I could say “Get out of the way”… THUD!!!!
Yes, that is right folks, I am the Australian equivalent to that hunter who killed Bambi’s mother.
For the next week, I felt awful. Those big sweet eyes and that poor orphaned Baby Roo, the widowed Papa Roo. I cried into my martini six times that week.
I cried into my martini so many times that I had to head down to the bottle shop to get a new bottle of vodka.
On the way home from the bottle shop, again at full speed, a wittle bunny wabbit comes wacing out of the woods and wight into my front tyre. I will spare you the details of how the wittle wabbit went flying through the air, but just know that I am still, two weeks on, having nightmares.
When I arrived home (and for the record I was not drunk driving that night. I was picking up the bottle of vodka because I ran out the night before) I asked Stuart,
“How many animals have you killed since we moved here?”
“None.”
So it is just me. I am an animal murderer.
WHICH TALE DO YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT NEXT? VOTE OVER THERE =======>
No comments:
Post a Comment