Buck Buck No. 1

Ever wonder how to get rid of those pesky tailgaters? No, I don't mean the kind that sit around and eat chili and drink beer because the only way they can sit through a football game is if their trashed out of their gourd and have a, erm, windfall of humor to fall back on. I mean the kind that have magnets in their bumpers. The kind that isn't intelligent enough to understand the whole one-car-length-for-every-ten-miles-an-hour safety margin. The kind that are probably very well educated with a well-paying job, so they can afford that shiny Lexus or BMW or Mercedes or Yugo other generally expensive automobile. Hey, look, ::crunch:: it's disposable... nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Anywho.

This guy has been wanting to go faster than me ever since he tried to pass on the left and ran into slower traffic and had to get in a couple of cars behind me. Lucky for me, those cars later went other places, and I had this guy - or girl, it was too dark to see - stuck to me like glue. Finally, when I turned off on Indian Trail Head Creek Road Thingamajig, I thought I'd get rid of him. No such luck.

Now, I've mentioned Creek Road Indian Head Nickel Trail Wotsit before - it's a curvy bit of road, where tailgaters are the native predators. Sometimes, even predators have to watch out, and there's a spot a short way down where the Police live. The usually appear in herds, and often have flashing lights and other such mating signals. Or feeding signals, I confuse those two sometimes.

So, tailgater with his - or her - nice, overly bright, probably expensive headlights blinding me (although, I do have to say, I didn't notice them all the time, because he was usually too close...) was right behind me, and I think to myself: "Myself, this is a dark and winding road, with Trail Road Indian Creek Head Watery Whatchamacallit running rapidly alongside, and with Head Indian Chief Road Creek Park all around with lots of wooded bits, and this guy is so close his fan keeps flipping into my skates in the trunk, and now, what would happen, if - say - a deer was to leapeth out of the woods, after sipping at the cool, frothing waters, and run in front of me..."

I was going to counter-argue with myself that nothing like that ever happens unless you absolutely don't need it to, when suddenly I saw something in the road, along the right side. I swerved a wee little bit, because it was just a wee bag, but you never know what is in it.

Now, the guy - or girl - behind me saw what my taillights looked like all of a sudden, but do you think they got the idea?

I'm not really sure, because that's when my headlights highlighted a buck with so many points that by the time I counted them he would be on his second or third set of antlers. He was standing just beyond where the bag had been.

I'm pretty sure I heard him text his buddy with something like OMGWTFBBQ!!!111 and then he whirled - now, the sensible deer would see a cartrain of about 5 or 6 units zooming towards him (I was still angling back towards the right from the paper-bag swerve) at ten miles over the speed limit, and would decide he needed another drink, and would slip quietly over the guardrail and go back down to the stream; nope, not this guy - he whirled towards me, as if he was going to use all those many, many points and rake the rear flank of my car.

Being the sensible lad that he was, he proceeded to then dart behind me.

Now, I swerved a bit once more, so that might account for the rakeless fender panel. My bumper-buddy however, is out one (very likely) expensive headlight.

It was too dark to see if any further damage was done.

Did the tailgater learn his lesson? Well, he - or she - didn't really slow down, but they did keep a proper distance.

Random Updatia

For those who don't check up on things over the weekend, a report about the hawk watch and dinner on Saturday - including links to pictures - can be found here, along with related recipes for Roasted Tomato, Pepper, and Onion and Fajitas & Salsa.

As pointed out earlier today, rather indirectly, there are many deer and very few cougars in these here parts. Yesterday, every time you'd look in the yard, you could find a deer or three. They really need to know what predators are like, because, obviously, I am not one in their book. The more they eat the things I plant, the more I almost start to wonder what they taste like.

Speaking of plants and eating, Justin and I really enjoyed the harvest of the kiwi. The hardy kiwi - a Siberian native, so hardy means something - has smaller fruit and is allegedly sweeter. It's supposed to be done cooking brewing ripening in September, and I tried one of the few that showed up last year, and found it to be harder and quite sour. These ones were a lot softer, for the most part, and those that were soft were sweeter than grapes. Yum!

While Justin was starting the car and scraping the frost from the window, I gazed around at the stars - even with the garage light blinding me, I could still pick out brazillions and brazillions of stars. Really makes you wonder what people were thinking when they light up a whole damn city and make themselves the focus of the universe, blocking out all but a handful of lights in the sky...