A DangYouToHeck recollection
It’s been a long off season, folks. We’re pretty tired of minor trades and the doings of other teams. I mean, since when did a Joey Loperfido trade warrant 300+ comments? He’s a nice kid by all accounts, and he puts in a solid effort. But he’s no team superstar. He’s not Bo, for instance. Nevertheless, we’re so starved for team stuff that the entire posse has weighed in.
So, let’s take a little break from The Blue Bird’s Doings and talk about something else.
What follows is because a blue jay (the bird I mean) just landed on my lanai cage. Once upon a time I didn’t know that they got this far South. But they do. And they come visit me a lot. However, they have always seemed massively out of place to me. I always picture them on a mound of fluffy snow, eating winter dried berries and the like. Now, here’s one with a palm tree in the background. It’s kinda jarring.
BOYNTON BEACH, FLORIDA – FEBRUARY 26: A Blue Jay populates the Green Cay Nature Center and Wetlands on February 26, 2024 in Boynton Beach, Florida. The weather in Florida provides a welcome habitat to many species of birds and other animals. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) Getty Images
But bird talk is not our purpose here. Rather, it is the unexpected arrival of an animal you weren’t expecting to be where it is that I wish to relate.
So, I want to tell a story. It’s about a time, more than 15 years ago, when my brother, my nephew & niece, and my daughter and I decided we’d head out of Calgary south, to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. It was to be a day trip into the mountains to go for a hike.
We had a nice time hiking and attempting to out Out-Door-Expert each other and then piled back into my brother’s minivan to head home. Driving part of the return leg would be my nephew. He was about 17 at the time and as nice a young man as you could hope to meet. His Dad, my brother, persisted in calling him The Boy, much like Homer Simpson referring to Bart. So, The Boy, like all teenage males in my family, was manifesting utter confidence and self belief in his ability to drive anything, anywhere, any time and was clearly at the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
He would not give over from the fact that he wouldn’t be trusted to manage Calgary traffic and the final leg of the trip would be made by either his Dad or me. Since we threatened to lay actual hands on him if he didn’t pull over when we told him to and the revocation of every right and privilege he had at home, he reluctantly agreed that he would in fact surrender driving when asked but he made no secret of the fact that he felt us Old Men lacked courage and spines.
At any rate we headed back, out of the mountains, into the foothills and farm land that marked the roads into PLPP, being driven by the least experienced driver in our troop. This with the girls, my daughter and his sister, both 14 or 15, declaimed about how much they had wanted to grow up and have wonderful lives full of adventure before a death far far into the future and that they’d very well see the end of it that day due to The Boy’s driving. For his part, he was maintaining the speed limit, had his eyes on the road, and seemed determined to not kill us all while proving to his Dad that he could handle anything.
Then “Anything” happened.
Now, given the terrain and locale you’d think a deer or a moose or maybe even a gopher ran onto the road. But no.
We rounded a mountainous corner, descending from the steep sections of highway onto a long runway-type section that lead down and around to the left onto more level roads. As we came around that corner, my brother, in the right front seat saw it first and said one word, loudly and distinctly, “BULL!”
I, sitting in the middle second row, saw it too, as my visual field cleared the obstructing shoulder of mountain. Barely a quarter second behind my brother I also said that word.
The Boy was the last to see it.
He was broadside on to us, head down, and probably licking salt from the edge of the road.
In the middle of the damn road. He was near the bottom third of the long straight we were on and maybe 100m away. To our left was the foot of a steep cliff. To the right a considerable drop into farmland.
At 100m or so and in hindsight, this was plenty of time to react and come to a stop if needed. In the moment, though? He was coming up fast, and though we were on the other side of the highway from him, given his incredible size, his hind quarters protruded over the line. We were headed right for his butt.
The Boy went for the brakes and the left shoulder, shockingly close to the rock wall of the cliff base, while my brother and I grabbed anything we could to brace ourselves as we started to abruptly slow from 110kph while swerving left. The girls were deep in conversation in the 3rd row seats and not paying the slightest attention to the road. Their conversation came to an abrupt end as we all tested the arrest feature of the seatbelts
I do not know how we squeaked by that guy’s arse, but we did.
The bull never reacted to us. He had his head down and he barely twitched as we went past at perhaps 40kph, such was our deceleration from 110kph. Had my brother wished he could have grabbed that guy’s tail if he’d had his hand out the window. To this day I vividly remember that shiny black hide, the smell as we ran through the lavish mound of manure he’d left for us, and the sight of his enormous backside as we sailed past.
That right there was the most unexpected, out of place, deeply jarring animal encounter I and a carload of my relatives had ever experienced. To this day I have but to say the word “Bull!” around my brother and he’ll INSTANTLY start laughing and mimic his death grip on the dashboard.
Around the big left the road took, we entered the level highway out of the mountains and made The Boy pull over and trade places with his Dad. He did so without a word, such was the shock. As we all sat there, talking over our various impressions about what had nearly happened, an RCMP pickup went roaring past us, lights and sirens a-going. Hot after him was a F-350 dually towing a trailer driven by a young man with the expression of someone who could see his very livelihood at stake. A young man who had clearly misplaced one solid ton of pedigree bull.
We sat there for a bit, all of us talking at once. It was a good while I think before we settled on a breed (limousin) and approximate weight (at least 2000lbs) of what the heck kind of bull that was back there.
So, tell me. Tell us all, since we’re bored and nothing much is happening, can you top that? Has an animal ever surprised you that much or been so unexpectedly there that your very life was at stake?