I saw a deer in the city on Friday, what’s the most unexpected thing you’ve seen on your commute?

Quote:Saw a dead badger
[Quote]Saw a dead badger recently, which is a bit unusual.

I saw a live badger 9 weeks ago. Just a split second as it shot out of some undergrowth and took my front wheel out. Result = fractured pelvis. Think the badger was ok..

#o

Most morning suicidal
Most morning suicidal rabbits, bats and the odd Roe deer. A duck that last year took to sitting down in the middle of the cycle path but the scariest has to be a huge badger that would charge at me in the dark. All of this takes place between Bath and the old Warmley station on the cycle path.

Not quite on my commute
Not quite on my commute (stupid home office!!!) but local enough to me all the same: dim-witted low-flying buzzards who like to cross roads at car-windscreen height or cyclist-head height. Not fun in situations where the close proximity of the cyclist’s head to the windscreen of a car was a worry even before the sudden and unforseen arrival of the buzzard.

There are also lots of dim-witted bunny rabbits who live on the unloved and waste ground and in the fields around the local sewage works, the city compost heap and the municipal incinerator. That’s a fairly deserted area at night, and the rabbits haven’t learned yet that they have a shiny new five-star cycleway traversing their salubrious accomodation. I’ve had two of them hop onto it from one direction right at the precise moment when another one had just decided to cross – also right in front of my nost – from the other side.

I’ve yet to run into wild boar, although it may be just a matter of time before a herd of them run into me: I have run into the man who shoots them, and he says that there are a lot of them about and that they keep him busy (when he’s not – sigh!!! – tending to stricken mountain bikers again.)

So far my encounters have mainly been with deer, hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, foxes, and toads. And men with chainsaws, and Nordic walkers (or, at the right time of year, actual Nordic skiers), and the usual doggy-horsey people and biker gangs on beer tours. At night, I sometimes also meet the kindhearted people who help toads across the road (toads attempting to cross have to hop along a fence until they fall into a bucket, and them twice a day somebody comes and carries the bucket across the road.)

Malevolent inanimate objects: mainly apples. I don’t like suddenly hitting a large, hard apple (or being hit by a falling one) when cornering downhill at dusk. But sometimes also falling rocks.

The animal encounters that stick in my mind the most are the point-blank ones with deer in a hurry. Especially the deer who sprang into my path and then – with it’s next leap – into the canal, which was fairly wide at that point and had very big chunks of ice floating around in it. I mentioned it to somebody afterwards; she segued off into a tale of woe that involved finding an unconscious cyclist who had been taken out by a deer in the same place. The person who came upon the deer victim didn’t have her own mobile to hand, so she started scrabbling around for the victim’s to call for help. Upon which the victim suddenly came back to life and discovered herself alone in a lonely spot with a potentially violent stranger who has busy stealing her phone…

Most unexpected thing?
A
Most unexpected thing?

A dog, on a lead!

viveLaPants wrote:I saw a

viveLaPants wrote:

I saw a llama, a labour MP and Bradley Wiggins – all last week – it was like a david lynch movie. :”(

I like it! Let’s put some fun back into this forum!
Banish dreary disputation about drivers and their bad habits!

Muntjac deer by Cabot Circus
Muntjac deer by Cabot Circus in Bristol, at 07.15 on a wednesday.

In no particular order I’ve
In no particular order I’ve spotted squirrels, rabbits, hares, foxes. Also encountered badgers which are much bigger in than I expected, it was the claws I heard before I saw it. I was followed by a bat briefly on one night time commute judging by the shape I saw, not an owl shape object above me, could it have been the LED pulses it was ‘hearing’?