911I hit a llama with my car last night. I was doing about 40 mph in a 45 mph zone when I spotted him twenty feet in front of me. I jammed on the breaks, anti-lock of course, and drove right into him, head on. Our eyes met just at the moment of impact. I have never looked into a llama's eyes before so I had no frame of reference for his (?) look. The next thing I knew the llama was shooting straight up in the air and My Ford Explorer came to a screeching halt and I heard the second thud. The llama landed on my roof, pushing in the back passenger section a good foot or so. It was a little after midnight and I was on my way home from my monthly poker game. I wasn't worried about the sobriety test unless they checked for Fritos and Pepsi so I called the local police on my cell phone. "Is this an emergency?" the dispatcher asked. "I don't think so," I said. "But . . ." "Well why did you call 911?" "I hit an animal while I was driving on Route 79," I told her. "Are you hurt?" she asked. "Do you require medical assistance?" "No to both," I said. "Then you shouldn't have used the emergency number," she said showing her annoyance at my ignorance. "Perhaps. Do you want me to call back on another number?" "Standby," she said. "Sgt. Prover here. What seems to be the problem?" "Hi Sgt. I was driving down Route 79 and I hit a llama that was standing in the road." "Any injuries?" he asked. "Only to the llama," I told him. "What kind of injuries?" he wanted to know. "I don't know," I said. "But they killed him." "Is your vehicle mobile," Sgt. Prover asked. "Yes." "Why did you call in on the emergency number if there is no emergency?" he wanted to know. "It seemed like the right thing to do. My car is damaged, and what the hell-a person just doesn't kill a llama every day." "Where's the llama now?" he asked. "On the road? Is it blocking traffic?" "No," I said. "It landed on top of my car." "Well, that's convenient. How about driving down to the station?" "Why?" I asked. "Because I told you to," he said. "Are you sober?" "Yes. I'm sober and I'll be there in a little bit." The llama landed feet (hoof?) first on my roof and three legs were buckled in kind of a squashed kneeling position and the fourth went right through and was dangling behind the driver's seat. Looking at the car it reminded me of those chicken delivery cars that have a chicken on top and then I thought of the time I was in Florida and saw a pest control car with a cockroach lying on it's back atop it. What could the llama be advertising I wondered? Sweaters? Petting zoo? When I arrived at the police station two officers and the dispatcher came out to look and also there were about five or six other people who were waiting for me. They spend their time listening to the police scanner and this was major for them. Sgt. Prover gave me a ticket for not securing the llama to the roof rack and since their regulations covered deer, horses, raccoons, bats, dogs, and cats only, they refused to help extricate the llama. I called my wife and she came to pick me up. I decided to leave the car at the police station and call my insurance company in the morning-which I did. I met my agent there and he said that he'd have to call his home office to see what to do. Meanwhile, there was a parking ticket on my windshield and the flies were getting pretty thick around the llama. So was the smell. The next day my insurance man still had no answer and there was a second ticket on the windshield. The town Health Officer showed up and declared my vehicle a health hazard and issued an order to impound it. I was so grateful for that I sent her a bottle of scotch. She reported the bottle to the town attorney who had the police issue me a summons for attempted bribery of a town official. No one claimed the llama. MUSIC DRIVERIt was around seven p.m., dark and moonless with occasional pockets of light drizzle and small patches of fog. I was, and I can't be exact, but can only judge from past performances, driving about 45 miles an hour in a 35 mile zone and thinking about my newest entrepreneurial project-THE GIBLETS. It started about a month ago when we were having company for dinner and my wife Alicia had planned to serve Cornish hens. She was at the store and I kept walking by the pile of uncooked hens on the kitchen counter, and the next thing I knew I had put them in sexual positions and was taking pictures of them. Alicia came home before I could re-pile the hens and stared at them for a few minutes and then looked up at me standing sheepishly behind my tripoded camera and she cracked up. Not the reaction I had expected. She loved the concept and decided that after they were cooked we would reposition them (so to speak) and serve them to each couple. The evening was a big hit and when I got the photos back I was surprised at how great they looked. Everyone I showed them to said that I ought to make greeting cards, so finally I went to a printer and began the process. The outside of the cards had sayings and inside were the pictures of the uncooked hens in raw positions with the FOWL PLAY one being a menagé á trois. Then I had two hens sitting up side by side with their wings draped over the other's headless shoulder and a cigarette sticking out of the neck and the card read, WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO? There was also, WILL YOU RESPECT ME IN THE MORNING? YOU RUFFLE MY FEATHERS, and a half- dozen others. As I drove along that moonless night, I remembered how my bowling group I was now heading to meet had laughed when they saw the hens. But since my last two ideas that the group had invested in hadn't worked out, I knew there would be no money coming from this source. I admit that the jazz tape I had just started playing a few minutes earlier may have pushed my speed up another five to seven miles per hour. I'm a music driver. Music and speed go hand and foot. If the blues tape hadn't ended there is no doubt in my mind that I would have been driving slower; and who knows what the outcome would have been. But the outcome was the outcome and fate is fate and it was dark and drizzling and I was driving over the limit listening to the New Orleans Jazzmatics stomping away when I looked to the right and out of the corner of my left eye I saw an animal at ten o'clock. It darted across the street from my left to right, just barely passing between two cars going the opposite direction. I heard two sickening thumps and checked my rear view mirror to see what I hit. At the end of the block there was a gas station so I pulled in and turned my car around to go back. Truthfully, I really didn't want to know, but I also didn't want the car behind me (which pulled into the station also and whose driver was now gassing up and glancing my way) to think that I was a hit and runner, so I waited for a break in the traffic and drove back as slowly as the other traffic would allow. I saw a lifeless form lying stretched out on the center white line and even though I now thought 'cat' I wasn't positive because of the line of cars behind me so I pulled off into a liquor store lot and turned around again, waiting once more for my turn to break through the traffic to the other side. Finally I saw that the road was clear in the direction that I wanted to go and one car was coming up on my left, but I knew that I could get across before it. That's unless the driver was a music driver also and just popped 'The Beer Barrel Polka' into his tape deck. I took the chance. I wondered if the dead animal gauged the traffic on both sides as I was doing, but I think he probably had all he could do to plan his final run between the two cars coming from the side closest to him. I pulled alongside my victim and stopped and turned on my left turn blinker, and the cars coming up behind me had to slow and go around. It was a cat. A dead black cat stretched out on its side - conveniently lying smack on the white line between lanes - now out of the way of traffic. I knew that I hadn't been driving on the white line so the impact must have knocked the cat there. As I drove off I got to wondering about what would have happened to me if this pure black feline had made it across the street in front of my car. Most people won't admit to their superstitions, but I will. Was it good luck that I bagged the little guy before he crossed my path when otherwise I would have been jinxed, or would my life stay status quo? Is there a jinx for killing a black cat? Of course there is for the cat - but how about the poor driver? As I continued my drive I began to wish that there were someone I could ask. Then an idea came to me. How about a superstition hotline? Someone to call to answer these kinds of questions, or even a 900 number. In that entrepreneurial spirit, I thought that if there wasn't one maybe I should start one. I could read up on all the superstitions, alphabetize them, throw a few ads in the local paper and on late night cable TV and I'd be in business. Just sit by my phone and computer and wait for the bucks to come pouring in. I figured that even if someone called me with a superstition that I didn't have listed, I would have a group of stock replies for those occasions and I would be able to give them an answer, After all, who would be more qualified than the "superstition maven"? I pulled into the parking lot at the bowling alley where I was to meet the guys, and I was still ten minutes early, so I leaned back in the seat of my forest green jeep and continued to think about my new business venture. I didn't know how much a 900 number would cost, but I needed a catchword or catchwords so people would remember. Most people hate dialing letters but they tend to remember and use them. I decided on 1 900 BLAK CAT at $1.95 for the first minute and $.95 a minute thereafter. I could envision a training class of superstition operators to help me with the overflow. After this took off locally, I would do regionally and then quickly go nationally before someone else tried to horn in on my business. Money, money, money. What a country, America. I was in the nether land between consciousness and sleep - reality and dream - and fielded my first call on the 900 number. It was from Midnight, a black cat, who wanted to know why it was considered bad luck for cats if a green Jeep crossed in front of their paths. I was flipping through my index for an answer when the honking of a horn snapped me awake. I grabbed my bowling ball bag and got out of the car and greeted my friends. As we walked towards the bowling alley I said to them, "Tell me what you think of this." Before I could tell them one of the guys said, OK, what's today's scheme, and the others laughed along with him. This was nothing like the other ideas that they had invested in- the broccoli jerky for vegetarians or the Velcro wing tips for sneakers. I decided that this time I had a winner. A real winner and I was going to be a real life success story, the kind you read about. My idea was too good to share with this crew, who I knew wouldn't come up with any bucks anyway, so I said, "Gotcha, just kidding," and laughed along with them as we went inside. ROAD KILLThe deer are eating the arborvitae again this morning. It's not their fault that this Connecticut winter is the coldest with the most snow in thirty years. They're ruining my yard, all my hard work over the years. I'm sure they've already gotten to the tulip bulbs. The powdered fox urine I spent a fortune on has done no good. I think instead of repelling them it attracts deer. But, I don't believe for one minute, that all the deer road kill is because of them getting reckless in their search for food. I think they are smarter than we give them credit for and are committing suicide rather than face starvation. I parked my car in the commuter lot at exit 61 and walked over to watch the cars on the turnpike below me. They are the crazy people, driving as fast as they do with ice and snow on the road. The truckers are the worst. They are fearless, speeding down the road and everyday I hear on the news about some exit being closed off because of a jackknifed tractor-trailer. I watched as three deer stood in the woods across the turnpike from me. As always, they were beautiful. I wonder if all deer are as beautiful to each other as they are to people. They huddled, seemingly planning their move, and finally single file they slowly walked down the hill towards the turnpike. There was a bend in the road so their sightline was limited, but most likely their hearing was better than ours. It would have to be so they could tell if a predator was sneaking up on them. They were all about the same size so I couldn't name them and be sure if I was talking about the right one when I mentioned his name. Sometimes, even most times there's a greater size difference and I can name them even it it's only for the few minutes I see them as they're bounding into the woods or across a field. There goes Groucho, Harpo and Chico. Look, Kramer, Jerry and Elaine. They stopped halfway down the hill and chewed on a white pine, something they would not ordinarily do, and then one left the others and continued down hill. As he approached the turnpike he picked up speed and jumped the side rail just in time to hit and be hit by an eighteen-wheeler. He flew up into the air landing on the windshield of a red sedan that swerved into the tracter-trailer that was breaking hard with smoking tires and sliding across his lane into the slow lane. The tractor-trailer jackknifed and the red sedan came to an abrupt stop after plowing into the truck cab lying on its side with its wheels spinning. The deer slid off the back of the red sedan and lie dead and bloody on the icy road. The truck driver was halfway out of his cab window, motionless, perhaps as dead as the deer. I wondered how many tractor trailer drivers choose to commit suicide by their lunatic driving and if this driver could possibly have been on a mission this trip to end his own life. I looked across at the hill and the other deer were gone. The traffic was now stopped in both directions and sirens wailed in the distance. I walked back to my car to listen to the news and see if there was once again a traffic alert about another jackknifed tractor- trailer. |