Bucko's World

Entry Date: 10 August 2009

Road Kill

Vive la difference, or so the French say, but of course we should ignore them coz they’re a bunch of c***s. But it’s something cheap air travel has given us all the chance to do. Get your arse somewhere else, have a look round, see how they do things and then decide we do them so much better at home.

Our beer, for instance, is the best in the world. Come home from any foreign trip where I’ve had little choice but to drink fizzy local lager at minus 5°C or shite regional wine made with grapes most civilised nations wouldn’t find fit to make vinegar with, and I’m gasping for a proper pint of London Pride or Spitfire. Our food’s the best too. Tell me you haven’t come back from your travels to the corners of the globe and not been gagging for a curry as soon as you set foot back in Blighty. And yes, curry is English, ask any Indian…..And, of course, the weather. We’re all desperate for a bit of cold and cloudy by the time we get back, even if just to give us something to talk about again.

So yes, Vive La Difference, so long as we all know that home is best………However…what if, while away on a foreign jaunt, you find something that is much better than we do it here at home??

One such case in point, from the lovely highways and byways of Florida comes one huge improvement over what we have here….

You’re familiar with the concept. You’re making your way down a leafy b-road, hedges brushing both wing mirrors and passing places available, when you happen upon dear old Mr Fox lying in the gutter his neck snapped in two. Or perhaps a game bird, squirrel - maybe even a badger…all standard stuff. But in Orange County things are so much more impressive. As we pilot the Land Barge towards the Magic Kingdom a glance out the window to the verges it’s as if the local zoo has had a breakout.

Firstly, instead of Mr Tiddles from number 42 whose missing poster is yellowing on a lamppost at the end of the road, there’s Armadillos (ARMADILLO! Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo0qjuA42HA

Next up is a Vulture, its massive wing span covering two lanes and crunching slightly as we pass over it. And then there’s the ring-tailed, glasses wearing, steroid-munching-squirrel-in-pyjamas that is the ‘coon. No, not what would generally be thought to be a typically southern racist comment but just how the local refer to the Racoons that fall from trees like acorns round here. Amazingly it’s all so educational. What had previously only been known to me for having a bone in its penis, now adds egg stealing and being munched on regularly Alligators to its list of attributes.

If that list isn’t impressive, than the pile we saw on the way down to St Pete’s can surely not be beaten. As we sat in traffic I looked out to see the now rather common sight of an Armadillo (ARMADILLO etc etc….) flattened and almost certainly having passed over to the next realm judging by the tyre tread decorating its carapace, next to the desiccated corpse of an alligator, the twitching remains of an Osprey and another one of those darned Raccoons. One can only imagine the battle going on for the poor little Armadillo’s (Armadi…..oh, you get the picture by now…) bones before the juggernaut’s tyre burst causing it to swerve and provide a Road Kill banquet unlikely ever to be topped.

Part two follows shortly.....