The worst was a raptor a couple of years ago. I’ve had six or seven bird strikes while driving, including the raptor. I’ve also hit a couple of snakes and squirrels.
I was driving through town at around 30 mph and saw a squirrel sitting up and thought, surely he will move…bump-bump and I looked back and just saw a tail waving, attached to a squirrel pancake.
And frogs have hit the underside of my vehicle with themselves hopping.
I can only assume I will hit a deer one of these nights.
So to compound it, you transported a dead gull across state lines.
Was the gull white? If so, The White-Slave Traffic Act aka the Mann Act has a rarely-enforced subsection concerning white gulls, the Seamann Act.
Rabbit
Duck
Actually they hit me!
Squirrels, of course. If you drive in the mid-Atlantic, after awhile a squirrel is going to make the wrong decision in front of you, and dart back under your wheels when it had been frantically scurrying away from your path a split second earlier.
Per a Shoe comic strip from the 1970s or 1980s, the splotch you leave on the road after such an encounter is a spot of PSD, which stands for Poor Squirrel Decision.
I also hit a large deer once, on the road running along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He just jumped out in front of me with too little time for me to brake. After I hit him, he was on his side in the road, thrashing like crazy, frantically but unsuccessfully trying to get his feet back under him for a few minutes. I wanted to help, but couldn’t safely get close, so I just stood back. Eventually he got back on his feet and limped away on three legs, with the fourth clearly hurt.
My 1970 Buick Skylark, from the days when American cars were built like tanks, wasn’t even scratched.
Growing up in the North Georgia Mountains, hitting small animals was inevitable if you drove after dark. My first car, a 1985 Honda CRX, was only inches off the ground and it had a spoiler under the front bumper that made it even worse. It had a tendency to decapitate any possums that were unlucky enough to be in my way!
Despite living in North Georgia for all of my 39.75 years, I’ve been very fortunate to only hit a deer once. My neighbor and his wife have totaled three cars over the last six years from deer impacts and everyone I know has had multiple deer hits, so I’ve been lucky.
But one time was MORE than enough for me! I was 19 and my best friend had just bought a brand new 1994 Z-28 Convertible. She let me borrow it to take a date to a Braves game one Saturday night. After I dropped off my date, I decided to have some fun with that slightly-detuned Corvette 5.7L V8 under the hood! I was going at least 90mph (probably faster) in a 45mph zone and suddenly a big buck jumped out in front of me! The impact caused his fur to melt into the fiberglass front nose/bumper in numerous spots. I had the convertible top down and somehow he flew right on over me (instead of into me) and landed about 40-50 feet off the road into the woods!
The car was only two months old and it did over $6000 in damage. Even worse, she had a $1000 collision deductible that I had to pay. I was stupid enough to call the cops (for insurance purposes) and they ticketed me based on the skid marks and condition/location of the deer…assholes!
With my current pickup I’ve hit at least 8 deer, a dozen or so skunks and countless birds. The deer I’ve always gone back to make sure they were dead, or shoot tureen otherwise. I’ve never had a problem with the skunk scent, seems to me that it’s the second guy to run it over that gets most of it, but maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Thank God for my ranchhand bumper, the only one that caused any damage was a buck that someone else had hit and left in the middle of the road. Ran over it’s antlers and got a flat.
I’ve never run into a deer. But I did have a deer run into my truck & damage it. The first two in the group ran across the off-ramp ahead of me and the third one ran straight into the side of my Bronco near the rear tire. Caved in the quarter panel pretty good. The deer made it off into the woods on the other side; I assume it was a little shaken up but otherwise survived the encounter.
In 40 years of driving I think that’s my only critter impact.
But the OP’s title said “vehicle”.
At work I’ve squashed any number of birds with my jet. Including an incident that punched a hole in the nose & caused us to make an emergency return. Had the geese hit a couple feet higher on the nose they might have come through my windshield with probably fatal consequences for me.
I also once killed a rabbit with a little Cessna. That’s not so unusual: small wildlife abounds on airfields & they get run over & squished pretty regularly. What made this incident noteworthy was I was airborne at the time.
I was just landing when I saw a rabbit sitting on the runway just ahead. I tried to hold off touching down, intending to go over the bunny and then set down on the far side. At the critical moment the rabbit jumped straight up & got cuisinarted in the prop. I touched down a couple seconds & 100 ft. later. So, an airborne rabbit strike.
My greatest worry about driving is that I will accidentally hit an animal. I’ve only been driving for 4 years and knock wood I haven’t yet.
But my husband and I did on our way back from picking up our classic car. We were driving in downtown Albany, NY when a squirrel literally dashed under our tire. It popped out from between parked cars and we honestly couldn’t do a thing. I looked back and I think the guy behind us finished him off. We circled back to make sure it wasn’t suffering and it was thoroughly flattened.
LSL Guy, I’m the OP and I define a vehicle as “anything you’re in or on that gets you from one place to another.” If you’re not on foot, you’re in or on a vehicle. Unicycle, pogo stick, Piper Cub, whatever! Well, okay, not roller skates or roller blades. Those are clothes.
Deer, groundhogs, rabbits. The deer was on purpose: I was in a old beater truck and he ran out in front of me and turned to run down that lane. I came up from behind, clipped him enough to break both back legs, cut his throat. And ate pretty well for a month or two.
I was out of work and things were tough. Basically free meat wasn’t something I would have passed up.
Not myself, but my wife hit a bear while driving at night in Vermont. Dented her car but the bear seemed fine as it ambled into the woods.
Just try driving during crab season in some Caribbean islands and not hitting a dozen crabs.
Actually, I forgot about the time that a few deer actually HIT me! My childhood best friend and I shared a house from 1995 to 2003 and it was in the middle of nowhere. We both turned 21 in 1996 and started going out several nights per week to bars in Atlanta which was a 70-mile drive each way. My best friend was a total drunk but I managed to pace myself drinking beer and I was 6’2" and 260#, so I was always the ‘designated driver after the fact’ simply because I was still conscious…most of the time.
In retrospect, it was AMAZING how many nights I drove that 70-mile drive back home and never got stopped by the cops a single time. But luckily I managed to keep it between the ditches and avoid hitting anyone or anything somehow.
One night in late 1996, we were about five miles away from home at around 3am. I was driving my best friend’s new Jeep Grand Cherokee and speeding at least 20mph over the 40mph speed limit. The country road was full of blind curves and it was absolutely pitch dark and even if I wasn’t drunk, I was exhausted and very sleepy. As we rounded a curve, I saw three does and at least two fawns run into the road ahead of me! I managed to honk the horn, stand on the brakes and steer around them at the same time (quick reflexes or divine intervention, I’m not sure). After I skidded to a complete stop, I heard a few loud THUDs on the passenger side of the Jeep. The stupid does were so disoriented that they ran smack into the side of the vehicle head first!!! It put two large dents in the front door and fender.
My sister is almost 3yrs older than me, so she was a Senior when I was a Freshman. My first car (in 1990) was an '85 Honda CRX that I had to pay for while my sister’s first car in 1988 was an '85 Nissan 300ZX that he bought…not hard to figure out who was his favorite! Anyway, she was the queen (or princess) or distracted driving, usually applying makeup or doing her hair in the rearview mirror (or sometimes pulling the visor down to use the lighted mirror while going 60mph)! This was in the late 80s and the girls here in Georgia had a hairstyle that we named affter the nearby city of Kennesaw- we called it the “Kennesaw Claw” because the bangs were teased up high and into a ‘claw-like’ shape then frozen with aerosol hairspray! Seriously, with the t-tops out, her bangs stuck out of the car!
Anyway, she was doing something other than watching the road shortly after she got her Z and flying down a country backroad. She failed to see several goats standing in the road and mowed down three of the damn things before she knew it. It tore the front bumper off, damaged the hood and one of the pop-up headlights and busted the radiator and core-support. The damage was over $4k (in 1988 dollars) and would have been more if she had reimbursed the goat owner. He tried to file a claim with the insurance company and then tried to sue when the claim was denied. But the court, like the insurance company, denied him because his damn goats shouldn’t have been in the middle of the road!
Some time ago a friend and I were driving through Kentucky and hit a turkey vulture. It was a big, beautiful bird ( from a distance at least ) that was sitting in a tree and as we got closer, it decided to leave its perch and fly straight at us. It took out a headlight, dented the hood, and cracked the windshield. It also smelled really bad but we cleaned up as much as we could and drove to a garage to get some repairs.