Tuppence

   I have been having very bad luck lately with regards to driving animals, and driving in general. Lately when I have been going along driving around this small Island I am visiting, well honestly mostly rushing for the ferry, drivers stop and pull over when they see me coming down the road. Yes I can see out of both eyes. Yes I am on my side of the yellow line and Yes I am going pretty darn close to 60kph. It has happened 3 times now in 2 weeks and for the amount of cars on the road here that equals approximately one third of all the cars I have seen. One person stopped on the far side of a corner right by a drop off down to the beach in the dark on the road to look at the moon as it was particularly glorious that night but not glorious enough to put oneself in that position. So even though I counted that one at first I am now saying it was on account of the moon and not because they could see me coming down the road towards them.
   Hoping to tune it down a bit I decided to take the miniature pony out for a trot on the pony cart. The pony thought it would be much nicer to sit in the field and eat hay than pull me around in the frosty snowy air and me foolishly trusting the intelligence of small beast aptly named Reepicheep let my guard down for a split second in the which said pony dived for the paddock and in one small step hit a small rock, which tipped the small cart, which flew over a large boulder with pony attached, ran through the yard, careened the cart into the car, ripped past the fruit trees and through the gate that only the pony can fit through and being a miniature pony the pony can still only fit through the gate the cart staying on the opposite side and the harness in tatters. The pony was very lucky to have totaled the cart and the harness or I and it would most likely still be out there roaming the dark streets ten hours later.
   The other reference with regard to driving animals and trusting the intelligence of small beasts happened Sunday morning as we were meandering down to the ferry. Who am I kidding? Church starts at 9:30 and I have 3 boys to get dressed, fed, snacked, washed, combed, ironed and out the door all in time to catch the 9am ferry so we were rather going straight down the hill. Across the parking lot in a straight line from the hill to the ferry ramp was a small flock of pigeons eating some crumbs on the ground and looking very "feed the birdish" from Mary Poppins. Who doesn't like to see a nice flock of birds flying overhead on a Sunny Sunday morning so I aimed the car straight for this little flock and they may have been eating something illegally grown on this island here in the middle of nowhere (I will have to check what kind of brownies the coffee shop is selling down there in the parking lot) but these birds didn't even look, not at 20 feet, 10 feet, 5,4,3,2,1! There were 3 distinct crunches and we were past. Lousy flock of birds didn't even fly away at the last minute, no pigeons swarming up gracefully over the water just some ferry worker cursing me under his breath a half hour later as he is scraping frozen pigeon off the parking lot. If the ferry rates go up next month I am not to blame, well maybe, but probably not.