Snatching victory from the jaws of stupid
There’s scary in numbers. One cricket is cute. Two crickets mating are interesting. Three start to become a crowd. A million on a dusty Kansas road are a nightmare at high noon.
Hitchcock knew this. He turned a harmless crow into the terror of The Birds by filling the sky with their screeching black crowd. He could have used bunnies. Or babies. It’s not the animal. It’s the crowd that animal keeps. It trips some ancient DNA from the time of the plagues and makes breathing a little harder. Crickets exercising their freedom of assembly become locusts.
They hop, hip-high, off blazing blacktop, pelting me, while I crush their kin under the wheels. There is no escaping them, no shelter or diversion on a highway bordered by endless fields of brown dirt. Ahead nothing but the glint of their bodies. I do what people do when they have no choice about things _ I come to terms with the situation. I settle in for miles of cricket homicide and pretend the pings on my legs are drops of rain. This uneasy equilibrium lasts until the first of many cattle trucks roars past me from behind, raising the swarm into a fog of insects, bouncing off my face.
I like animals and I’m happy to see one of anything that’s not big enough to eat me and isn’t a cockroach.
I saw one cockroach in 3,000 miles and one animal big enough to eat me. It was a mountain lion ahead on the Katy Trail in Missouri. It sat idly, a dark hulk on the white trail powder, watching me. I turned back to find the nearest trail exit, a gravel path that took me on a winding route to a little town, where people told me the mountain lion was probably on his way to a nearby sheep farm for a little lunch.
Having survived Kentucky, I knew how to deal with dogs. Every cyclist who’s been through Kentucky has dog stories. I’m told to watch for coal trucks, headless horsemen and roughnecks in pickups who throw beer bottles. Mostly, I’m told to watch for dogs. That last warning is right on. Dogs are chasing me five to 10 times a day in Kentucky. Cyclists work up different strategies for facing down the dogs they can’t outrun. Some carry pepper spray or squirt water from their bottles. I use a different tactic — a bloodcurdling roar. I don’t know where, within me, this inhuman noise comes from. I’m a quiet guy. I suck at common road rage, and really must work on that. But this scream is so good, so startling in its velocity and ragged anger, that I almost scare myself. So when I can’t outrun the animal, I confront it. Stop, face it, approach it if I have time. Get off my bike and run toward it, even. Screaming, “Get outta here!” The dogs stop, retreat, often with a hangdog look that seems to say, “Chill, dude. Just checking you out.”
Only once, in Virginia, do I come across a dog that won’t back down. A big wooly one with swinging flab that starts tracking me in its yard, running parallel to the road. I can see its hairy, fast body through gaps in the bushes, matching my speed. I’m going uphill with no way to win this race. Finally the beast pivots left, bursts through the bushes and makes for me on the far side of the road.
An approaching SUV accelerates, then brakes, blocking the dog’s lunge. Then the driver taunts the animal and drives off slowly. The dog pivots again, this time to chase the vehicle instead of me. Cresting the hill, I shoot down the other side, grateful for the angel in the SUV who saved my skin.
Dumb dog, so close to the prize. I have snatched victory from the jaws of stupid.
