Brian runs over a Bird.

How many animals have you run over in your life? The reason I wonder is that this morning I ran over a bird and I'm thinking that has to make about 10 things I've run over in my life. I'm wondering if that's a high number or a low number or just about par for 15 years of driving. I've never run over any people yet, I guess that's a good thing, but one time I did a U-Turn and almost hit a brown guy on a bike. He was not pleased with me.

So after this bird I think I have run over the following:

A few birds- It's hard to tell sometimes because birds are little and usually the same color as the street.

A squirrel or two- This happens because squirrels do this stupid thing where they sprint past your car and then do a quick 180 to wind up back under your tires.

A Canadian Honker-It was early one morning and I was driving and a car was stopped in the middle of the road and I couldn't figure out why so I went around her and crushed a goose she had stopped for. Oops. I felt really bad and this lady compounded things by screaming at me that she wished somebody would run me over. I responded with a stream of profanities that shocked even me. I'm glad she didn't call the cops because I probably could have been busted for whatever the law's equivalent of being really scary and gross was.

An Opossum- Maybe he was just "playing himself" and fooling me though.

A Deer- This inspired a really bizarre confrontation between me and the deer afterwards. I was driving home from college, when this really depressed deer decided to commit suicide using my car. I remember seeing him and saying "OHOHOH" as I smashed into him. In retrospect, maybe trying to avoid him would have been a better strategy. Anyhow, I stopped the car and started walking back towards him to make sure he wasn't suffering. At some point on my walk I thought, "What am I going to do if he is alive?" A deer is too big to step on and squish. I decided that I'd have to choke him. So here I am, walking along Hwy 90, fully preparing to choke a deer, and I didn't even have my choking gloves with me. Luckily he was dead.

A Baby Lion- At least that's what it looked like, although when I went back to find it nothing was there. I will tell you that I was intentionally covert about searching for it just in case there was a pride of angry lions out stalking around near Waseca.

Also one time I saw a dead cow on the side of the road which was pretty unusual. And I heard that Dick Cheney ran over a panda once. So is that a lot of things to run over? I hope not.