# Suicidal Bird
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 4, 2011, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397 "2011-08-04T00:15:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/1 "2011-08-04T00:15:58Z")
I was on my way to work this afternoon, and was driving alongside a large park/nature preserve. I wasn’t driving fast, maybe 30 MPH. A bird suddenly flew out of the trees, straight at my van.
It’ll swerve, I thought. It’ll pull up at the last minute and avoid the collision. I’ve seen this happen so many…
…_WHUMP!!!_
Well, OK, so maybe it won’t.
Feathers went flying everywhere and now there is one less really stupid mourning dove in the world to procreate.
I really hate killing an animal. ☹
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### Author:  [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/2 "2011-08-04T01:36:00Z")
Yeah, once when I was driving in downtown Dallas, I had to go through an underpass. This pigeon up on the lane divider just walked out under my front tire.
I mean, geez, buddy, if it’s that bad you’ve got to end it all, okay, but did you have to use me to do it?
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### Author:  [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/3 "2011-08-04T01:49:20Z")
A bad week for birds. [520 bridge’s beloved bald eagle is struck and killed](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015800831_eagle2m.html).
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### Author:  [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/4 "2011-08-04T04:41:14Z")
Very sad about the eagle. That would upset me alot more than a mourning dove that really looked like it wanted to take my van on.
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### Author:  [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/5 "2011-08-04T15:56:12Z")
When I was a child, my family was driving down the freeway in SoCal under an interchange when a pigeon slammed into our windshield with such a force it’s heart was ripped from its chest. The bird went one way off the car, while the heart slid down the windshield into the wiper well (where it was later removed with a stick by my dad) leaving a smear of blood in its path.
It was the most awesome display of gore I had ever seen up to that point and my mother, sitting in the passenger seat and having the best view, was sufficiently horrified. Her horror quickly morphed into nausea, to the extreme amusement of Dad and me (it was not unusual for Dad and I to tease her mercilessly). Her horror and nausea soon turned to annoyance and anger as my Dad and I tried and failed to contain our mirth at her reaction.
Sorry about that, Mom.
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### Author:  [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/6 "2011-08-04T16:00:32Z")
After an incident involving my windshield and a bird getting caught in an unfortunate gust under an overpass in Pennsylvania, Sweetie still occasionally calls me the Pigeonator.
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### Author:  [@smee\_goan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smee_goan)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/7 "2011-08-04T16:12:21Z")
Hot sauce and toast, Mmmm.
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### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/8 "2011-08-04T16:24:10Z")
A few years ago I was driving back from France and had just got on the Eurotunnel shuttle (the [train](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle) you drive your car onto to go through the Channel Tunnel).
When the next car pulled up behind me, it had a large hole smashed in the top of its windscreen, right next to the rear-view mirror, with the thoroughly tenderised remains of a plump pheasant sticking out of it. :eek:
The driver said he was doing about 80mph on the autoroute when the bird launched itself out of an adjacent field. He decided to leave it where it was as he thought the whole windscreen would fall in if he tried to pull it out. Must have given him a bit of a fright…
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/9 "2011-08-04T16:36:17Z")
> [@phouka](#):
>
> Yeah, once when I was driving in downtown Dallas, I had to go through an underpass. This pigeon up on the lane divider just walked out under my front tire.
>
> I mean, geez, buddy, if it’s that bad you’ve got to end it all, okay, but did you have to use me to do it?
And what about “the deal?”
> [@](#):
>
> George Costanza: Miranda thinks I’m a butcher, but - it’s not my fault, is it? Don’t we have a deal with the pigeons?
>
> Jerry Seinfeld: Of course we have a deal: They get out of the way of our cars; we look the other way on the statue defecations.
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/10 "2011-08-04T16:38:00Z")
I have a story with a happier ending. A few months ago, I was driving to work along a street near my house, when a bird tried to fly across the street a little too low. From my POV, it was flying from right to left (ie, passenger side to drivers’ side) when it hit the top of my hood and went careening off into the middle of the road. I stopped the car (it’s not a busy road) and went back to see if the bird was dead, but it was gone. I guess it only got a glancing blow.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/11 "2011-08-04T16:51:20Z")
No car incidents for me, but my friends and I have had a number of motorcycle-based collisions with birds. I’ve hit two small birds - one with the fairing of my bike, the other with my helmet. The helmet strike was alarming; it was a glancing blow by a smallish bird (a robin I think), but the highway-speed impact really jarred my head, and made me fear the possible consequences of a direct hit by something larger.
And larger hits have happened. A friend hit a Canada goose with his bike a few years ago. It shattered the windscreen of his bike, then wrecked the visor mechanism of his helmet and severely bruised his shoulder. I think a direct hit with his helmet possibly would have killed him.
Another friend managed to hit a small bird with the central-facing surface of his front rim (i.e. the surface on which the valve stem is located). Bird must have flown in from the side somehow; it was pretty gruesome, as it remained stuck there even after riding a few hundred miles that day. Eew.
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### Author:  [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suicidal-bird/591397/12 "2011-08-04T16:57:55Z")
When we lived in Berlin, on the 8th floor of an apartment complex, we had a sparrow we nicknamed “Kamikaze”. Almost every day, for week after week, this bird would take a flying dive into our picture window and then fall, dazed, onto the balcony - shake it off and fly away. It happened so often that even friends who would visit us got to see good old Kamikaze in action.
Fortunately, the bird was never successful in its suicide attempt, but it must have had the hardest head, strongest beak and worst navigation of any bird in Berlin at the time.