Collisions with Animals

Incident I:

I was riding my bike to work yesterday when a wild turkey appeared, bolting into the middle of the street, darting and gobbling and nearly colliding with the  wheels of my bike. My first instinct was not to swerve out of the way, sacrificing myself into oncoming traffic, but instead to hit the turkey head on like a motorist is supposed to do with a deer in his headlights, destroying it rather than myself. But it swerved out of the way, going back into the lawn it had been cavorting about on.

“What a funny thing!” I said aloud, laughing at a volume just high enough for a jogging woman to hear and scoff in the midst of her jog-breathing. I remembered for a second, after the near-collision, the time my father was on a triathlon team. He and his friend Greg were canoeing. During the bicycling portion of the race, my sister and I stood by the roadside, watching expensive racing bikes zoom over hot pavement. Then a little girl stepped into the road and was struck immediately, the bike cutting enormous gashes across her legs from which poured probably, I would say, five gallons of blood, give or take. In my jumbled memory/imagination, this cyclist was Scream Guy, gashing up this girl maliciously. But I am certain it could not have been Scream Guy. It was probably just a Regular Cyclist.
When I was on my bike, speeding down the road, I made eye-contact with the turkey. He shot me a look which announced, “YOU ARE SCREAM GUY!”

So then I said, “What a funny thing!”

Because I am not Scream Guy.

Incident II:
Last night I was sitting at my desk, clicking Friday night away like a true loser, when I heard shuffling and meowing just outside my window. It was not a regular cat.
AN ENORMOUS CAT! I thought.
A JUNGLE CAT! I thought.
IT MUST BE SHERE KHAN ON MY LAWN! I thought.
But it was not Shere Khan, it was my sister. Unknown to anyone in the city of Austin, Lauren had taken a plane, then another plane, then a cab, until she arrived on my yard, positive that I would be home on Friday night, clicking the night away like the epic failure I sometimes am known to be. Then, when I came out to the yard and saw her there, AMAZING SURPRISE WEEKEND commenced. It was fantastic. We walked around, cracked jokes, made pasta, saw a movie. Good times for all. Praise the Lord it was not Shere Khan, the famed Jungle King from the film “The Jungle Book” (Also from “Tale Spin” later in his career.) He truly would have disemboweled me.