Incident #1: splat

As I was sitting at my desk at work today, there was a loud crash on the window behind me. When I turned to look, there was a Red-capped-Parrot laying on the ground with its neck broken, dying even as I watched it. When I went out to pick it up, it was taking its last few breaths before dying in my hands. It was particularly sad as its mate was sitting in a nearby tree, calling out plaintively.

This is the fourth bird to hit those windows this year but the first that has died. We have asked the maintenance guys to put up some strips to make the glass more visible but to no avail. The consequence is that the windows are now plastered with 10-12 pieces of scrap paper to try to prevent any more birds from crashing into them.

Incident #2: close escape

Driving home from work tonight, I had to go through some roadworks where they have cut four lanes to two and put a 40kph speed limit on that stretch. It was dark when I was driving through and I didn't quite realise what was happening - a wide truck coming from the other direction was doing about 70 (the usual limit there when there are no roadworks) and was shearing off each of the orange plastic lane markers and flinging it straight into the oncoming traffic - us! My car was struck by four of the markers - one hit high on the driver-side pillar and bounced over the roof, two hit my right wing and the fourth shot straight under the car but made a terrible noise.

It happened so fast that I barely had time to brake before the truck was past and repeating the chaos to all the cars behind me. I was OK but there were two large dents in the wing and some scratches on the bumper where the marker had disappeared under the car. The car behind me though got hit by the marker that bounced off my car, cracking her windscreen and had additional damage as well. The car behind her had damage too but not as severe, the next had no damage at all, the next had lost a head light and so it went on.

The sad thing was that none of us got the truck's rego so I'm not sure how the insurance claim will go. The six of us did all share our details though so that we can be mutual witnesses for each other. The truck never stopped or even slowed so I don't know whether he even knew the chaos he was causing.