I’ve mentioned that I went to college in Kansas for my first degree, and out of four years I think I only flew there once or maybe twice. I got really good at that 11-hour drive. I am going to share with you an anecdote that happened to me as I was driving home from Kansas one day, simply because it’s something that made me say to myself, “Did that just happen?” And things like that should be put down in writing for posterity.

So I was driving, and I had made it to the small towns of Texas. I only had a few hours left, and I was feeling weary. I may have been listening to music, talking to myself, or perhaps I had even resorted to car dancing. Hey, whatever it takes to stay awake. Out of nowhere, two birds came flying at my car. I kid you not, one of the birds shoved the other one directly into my path. I witnessed a bird murder. I had no time to dodge. I hit that bird with the front right corner of my vehicle, knocked out my headlight, and lodged the bird’s body in the newly-formed cavity where the headlight used to be. I knew the bird was stuck there because I could see one of its wings flapping up in the wind.

I watched that wing flap for at least an hour, and my only thought was, “What am I going to see when I get out of my car, and how am I going to get it out of there??” I was not excited about the answers to either of those questions.

And then! Something happened that I ordinarily would NOT have been excited about. Randomly, the rubber covering of my front right tire came loose and flew off. I don’t mean I got a flat tire, because the inner tube was full. Only the tread unraveled. As it came undone and launched itself from my car, it knocked the bird’s body out of place, dislodging it from the headlight.

Of course, I still had to deal with replacing my tire and headlight, but at the time I was much happier to deal with that than bird guts. The only evidence that it had ever happened at all was a few stray feathers.