She meant it literally

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The other week a couple of friends came to stay; we were all going to a concert together. They had quite a way to come but the journey was going OK until they were about half an hour away. Then, as they were driving down the motorway at about 60 mph, a pheasant standing on the verge suddenly decided to take a chance and make a dash for it. A motorway has three lanes of traffic in each direction and on a Friday afternoon it was pretty busy. My friend had no chance to brake or swerve. There was a ‘ker-thump’ and the poor pheasant never made it across. When they arrived and told us a pheasant got stuck in the front of the car, I thought she was just speaking metaphorically. But no, the pheasant had hit the front of the car with some force, pushing the front grille in so that the dead pheasant was partially behind it but stuck firmly in front of the actual radiator. They couldn’t drive all the way home again like that! We all attempted to remove it but it was tricky. We couldn’t pull it out of the front because the grille couldn’t be moved, and if we pulled the leg still sticking out it would most likely just break off. We couldn’t push it out of the back because the radiator was there. At the top was the front body of the car, and underneath was a plastic cover. She thought she would have to go to a garage the next morning, but eventually I managed to push it fully inside then winkle it out intact from one end of the plastic base. My friend felt really bad, but there was nothing she could have done to avoid it. Pheasants are not native to this country and about 50 million (!) are raised and released each year for shooting parties, so at least she didn’t need to worry she’d caused the demise of any endangered native creature. And it certainly met a quick end. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.