By MIKE STACEY
There are two things that I consider as irrefutable proof that God has a wicked sense of humour.
Number one is the animals in Australia. Often referred to as “The Blunder Down Under,” it is all explained away by evolutionists that since the Australian land mass separated from all the rest so long ago, the creatures that went with it evolved along a different route. Blah blah blah. Creationists, however, will tell you it was more of a “Hold my beer and watch this” scenario. The second piece of evidence is “karma.” This is the divine “pie in the face” one gets for doing something dumb. Often “instant” but sometimes served cold.
It’s fun to see videos of guys who have just bought a supercar with five times the horsepower of the biggest semis on the road. To prove their driving prowess they punch the throttle, leaving a light, whereupon said vehicle breaks traction and goes rogue, travelling wherever it should not be and invariably ending up in someone’s swimming pool or more likely smashed into a large stationary object: power pole, fire hydrant, police car, like that.
My own favourite cases of divine intervention all involve tailgaters. I do not like being followed too closely. The first was when I was travelling through the Fraser Canyon with some clown in a BMW right up my tailpipe. After a few miles of this foolishness he got his chance and blew past me like I was chained to a stump.”Won’t see him again,” I told myself. Wrong. A mile up the road I found him engaged in pleasant conversation with the cop who had just nailed him. I did not see him again after that.
The second incident was while driving the big truck up a hill in Saanich with a moron in some small car behind me. He was close enough that I could not see him in the mirrors, but I had seen him catch up. Up ahead I could see a bicycle grinding its way up the hill. Plenty of visible road ahead, time to pass him. To let the genius behind me know what I was up to, I turned on my left signal before pulling over to give the bike lots of room. Einstein decided that this was a perfect time to pass me, having been too close to me to see the bike. I saw him pull out and thought, “Run over the bike or put this idiot in the weeds?” The cyclist was innocent on all counts, so I opted for the weeds option. I enjoyed how he plowed through the grass, dodging mailboxes and signs and hitting bumps that car was never designed to encounter. I’m sure he had plenty to say about me after he returned to the travelled portion, but looking in his mirror he would have seen the bike and a smiling truck driver.
Third, and my favourite, was when I was going past St. Mary Lake with a big Cadillac trying to shove my ‘51 Chev up to warp speed. I saw up ahead a rock on the road about the size of a grapefruit. He could not see it, situated exactly where it would conflict with my left front wheel, had I maintained my current heading. The nice thing to do would have been to somehow warn the Caddy, but for reasons unknown I just drifted slowly across the centre line, like a guy in an old pickup is likely to do. As I straddled the road hazard I listened for the results. Bullseye. He hit that thing with a very satisfying crunch and I felt no shame listening to it bouncing around the inner fender, leaving dents wherever it went.
Now, the purpose of all this storytelling is to show what can happen to someone who writes disparaging letters to the paper about roosters. Our neighbours decided to have a few chickens in the back yard. One of the little ones (chicklings? chicklets?) turned out to be, you guessed it, a rooster. So I should be all wound up and raise hell, right? No.
My letters were not so much about roosters but people and entitlement. Over the years we have had some good neighbours and some bad. Right now we are surrounded by good ones, all homeowners, and I’m not going to screw that up. The rooster’s owners are prepared to get rid of him if it becomes a problem, but I don’t think it will come to that. He is a very nice looking bird and doesn’t crow very much. Sometimes I go over to the fence and talk to him about the CRD coming to clap him in irons, but that has not happened yet.
When I was told that his name is Cinderella that clinched it. He is not going anywhere. As I write this I can faintly hear Barry White emanating from the henhouse amid the crashing, flapping and squawking as Cinderella “gets busy.” Turns out roosters are pigs too.