Suicidal animals

Over the years of biking I have had the chance to observe a lot of the natural world around me. It's interesting to realize that by making so little noise on a bike you can sneak up on a coyote on a city trail, or get within a dozen yards of a family of deer crossing the street way out in the country. Or course you can also get the joys of learning which houses along your routes have the aggressive dogs. My personal favorite was the house with the bullmastiff. I swear that the dog was level with the top tube of my bike as he was running in the ditch!

Oddly enough though, dogs probably aren't the most problematic animals you can face while riding. Sure they will chase you until you leave their territory. But often they are just looking for a bit of fun. I found that out when I crashed while being chased once and the dogs (yes there were 3 of them) just stopped to look at me as if to say "Hey, why did you do that? We were having fun.". No the worst animal to encounter out there is a squirrel. I swear that they are suicidal little fuckers, that's the only way I can explain their behaviour.

The other night as I was riding down a hill and getting ready to take the gentle curve as fast as possible a squirrel came darting out onto the road in front of me. Now there was a enough distance between us that I had plenty of time to think of what to do. Do I go around behind him, crossing the path that he just took? No, that's never good. I've done that before, and they run back to where they came from, usually taking a path under you wheels. Maybe I should just go in front of him, you know, try to encourage him to go back the way he came. But wait, it looks like he's rocking forward, ready to sprint right at me should I go to that side. Maybe it would be best just to aim right at him, he wouldn't be stupid enough to stay right there, would he? Oh shit he's spinning in circles!

Seriously you can never predict where these damn rodents will go or any other small animals for that matter. For the animal lovers in the crowd don't read any further because I'm about to detail my "hit list" from the years I've been biking.

1. I'm still not sure if I really did get this one or not. But when I was living in Montreal a squirrel did exactly what I mentioned above, only I chose to go behind it. It also chose to run back that way and found itself between my front and rear wheel at one point. So considering I heard a squeak I guess I did run that one over, though I think he made it out alive.
2. After a long ride in Edmonton I was cruising in along a river valley trail with one other guy. After going over a little bridge a sparrow came upon my left side, and proceeded to fly through my front wheel! The damn bird made it out alive, though possibly nicked by one of the spoke (one more reason for low spoke count wheels). Because he seemed to be rather pissed and proceeded to peck at my right crank arm a couple of times before flying off.
3. On a pre-race ride of a course near Edmonton our group of six riders were in single file along the edge of the road. As we approached a ground squirrel that was on the side of the road he started to run the same direction as us. This was fine for him, until he decided that it would be safer to try and run to the left, right across our path. Well he ducked behind the lead riders front wheel, but didn't get out of the way of the rear wheel. Before he could recover from that one I was there and got him with both wheels (and I could feel it as I rode over him). By this point he was turned back towards the ditch, but once again before he could get any further rider number three got him with both wheels. He did not live though that.
4. Finally this last one was just kind of scary. I was leading a 4 man team time trial outside of Edmonton on a Tuesday night race. We had just turned around and were doing roughly 40 km/h (25 mph) in close formation, I know I was on my aerobars (making bike handling a lot harder). Anyway all of a sudden I noticed something brown streaking at my from the left. The next thing I realized the brown object was colliding with my downtube, just behind my front wheel, in a puff of feathers and a squawk. All I can say about that one is that I'm glad it didn't find it's way into my front wheel because that would have been much more messy and dangerous.

So yeah, I've gone on about people being stupid before on this blog, but clearly this seems to be a natural animal condition. Though with squirrels I can only imagine that the only reason that they haven't gone extinct is by pure strength of numbers.