The Biggest Swimming Pool in the World

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Superlatives are words used to qualify the absolute top or bottom in quality or quantity. How we enjoy talking about the wealthiest man in the world, the thinnest tablet or the most crooked political leader!

I guess these words were invented to make us forget how common our ordinary lives can be.

As I was discussing superlatives with colleagues, it made me think of something that happened while I was still married.

My wife was born to drive a car. She just loved to take to the road. She used any excuse to jump into the car and travel aimlessly looking for something new to see.

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take a ride in the countryside.

My wife was at the wheel. Fields, groves and cattle were going by the left and right of the car. I was daydreaming, thinking how great life was and how wonderful it was to be alive.

We came to a village famous for its cheese curds factory and decided to stop and sample the local delicacy.

Cheese curds were invented in Canada in the early 1960s by dairy farmers trying to bypass quota regulations. Easy to make, this fat, salty, slightly processed cheddar cheese quickly became popular and gave birth to the infamous “poutine,” a meal made of cheese and french fries topped with hot gravy.

We bought our cheese and as my wife was admiring the quaint shop, I read a story in the local newspaper about one of the area attractions, “the biggest natural swimming pool in the world.”

As soon as I mentioned it to my wife, she wanted to see it since it was only a few miles away.

We found the “swimming pool” at the end of an unnamed dirt road. The pool was made of three communicating stone basins at the foot of a large rock where a trickle of cold water was flowing from a spring. The bottom of each basin had been painted aquamarine to give the impression of an artificial swimming pool. All in all, the lagoon was much smaller in size than an olympic swimming pool.

It had been a hot summer with less than average rainfall. The stream was not a bubbly jet of water, just a slow dribble. The smallest basin was empty and the deepest contained nothing more than three feet of sticky water, green with algae proliferating under the warm sun.

This did not seem to bother the numerous children who were noisily splashing about in the water while their parents, slumped into lounging chairs around the pool, distractedly kept an eye on their progeny.

I told my wife this seemed to be the perfect place to catch a dermatosis that would make these poor kids’ skin tougher than the hide of Big Joe, the largest alligator of Florida that we had seen near Fort Myers.

With more than one million American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in the world this species is far from being endangered as it haunts the southeastern United States. The word “alligator” is derived from el lagarto (the lizard), the name given to the reptile by the first Spanish explorers.

“You always see the bad side of things! Look at how much fun they’re having!” she said smiling and waving at the children.

At that moment, a man with a worn-out Elvis Presley T-shirt and sporting a dirty pair of khaki shorts with a dangerously open fly came to meet us.

— Welcome to our little paradise on Earth! Are you looking for a place to park your camping trailer?

— Erm... No, we just came to see the biggest swimming pool in the world, I said before being interrupted by my wife.

— Oh! There’s a campground? Can we see it?

— Yes, behind those trees, answered the man pointing towards a thinly-wooded area. I can give you a tour if you want.

— Oh! That would be delightful! Shall we go my darling? said my wife to me as she took the arm of our improvised guide.

Against my will I followed them through an underbrush planted with birch and aspen trees.

A lacing road was forming a loop of the campground. Trailers were parked along the road close to each other, most of them permanently. Some seemed to have been there for decades.

At the centre of the loop, a large porcelain urinal decorated with lights and plastic flowers was acting as a grotto for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The saint was standing in this makeshift shrine with her open arms, looking discouraged as if she declined any responsibility for the compound she found herself in.

Our guide was explaining the intricacies of camping to my wife as she obediently listened and asked questions from time to time. The man was so happy to have found an audience that he was rocking on his heels, a nervous tick that, to my dismay, was causing the broken fly of his shorts to open even more.

He then invited us for coffee in his trailer. My wife accepted although I was not keen on the invitation and we walked towards the fellow’s mobile home.

The trailer looked like our guide: common and unkempt. As the guy started to fight to open the jammed door, the broken fly zipper of his shorts gaped even more and, to my disgust, I saw “Elvis” leaving the building.

I had had enough. I took my wife by the arm, thanked our host and, pretending we had a long ride home we left this place where I had seen everything I wished I had never seen.

Swimming pools have been popular since antiquity, the oldest one was found in Sindh, Pakistan. In England, public swimming pools appeared in the mid-19th century. However, nobody has ever boasted of having the emptiest swimming pool in the world.

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Hospital Diaries V: The Seagull

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next.

When everybody around you is suffering, your own pain becomes less important. I quickly realized that my complaining and moaning weren’t providing any relief. I was only contributing to the overall noise in the gurney hall.

A nurse had taken away my bottle of ibuprofen and the painkillers that they had given me were totally ineffective. I was too stiff to move and the thin blanket covering me was not keeping me warm. I was in constant pain and felt helpless.

When another nurse came to check my vital signs, he noticed my distress and asked:

“How are you sir? Are you in pain? Can you rate your pain?”

I could not understand why nurses insisted on wanting me to rate my pain on a scale from zero to ten. I felt it was impossible to draw meaningful conclusions from such subjective impressions.

“It hurts a lot,” I answered.

“You were given a painkiller two hours ago,” said the nurse after looking at my chart. “Maybe it’s not pain you’re feeling but only discomfort.”

I was not in the mood to discuss semantics and I gave the nurse a spiteful glance.

Pain is a reaction to an unpleasant stimulus. Tolerance to pain can vary deeply between individuals. The most common tool used to measure pain is a standard scale graded from zero to ten. The accuracy of this tool is questionable.

“You’re probably right,” I said with sarcasm, “and I’m also very cold.”

“In that case I can help you.”

The nurse went away and came back with a warm blanket to wrap me in. I dozed off almost immediately.

During this first night in the gurney hall, my neighbour who had broken her back was transferred to an actual hospital room and I now had a new roommate who was retching loudly behind the thin curtain separating us.

When I woke up in the morning a tall slim man in a white smock was standing by my stretcher.

“I looked at your MRI results and saw that you have light arthrosis on two of your lower back vertebrae. That would explain your spinal stenosis and could be the cause of your paralysis.”

The hospital staff spoke in a strange language that I could barely understand. They also tended to show up unexpectedly and never introduced themselves. I found this extremely annoying.

“That’s interesting,” I said snidely. “Who are you sir and what do you do?”

“My name is Dr. Sharp and I’m a neurosurgeon. I doubt surgery on your spine would be beneficial. You don’t have severe arthrosis and I do not recommend this operation”.

Surgery is too often viewed casually by patients and doctors alike in the Western world. However there is something creepy in having masked strangers performing mysterious acts with sharp objects on sleeping people, don’t you think?

“Dr. Sharp, are you telling me I have arthritis?” I said confused.

“No. I said arthrosis. Arthrosis is a degenerative disease of the bone cartilage. Arthritis is a swelling of the joints. Arthrosis is a wearing down of the bone cartilage that often occurs with age.”

“And what is spinal stenosis?” I asked.

“Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal where the spinal cord is located. In your case, arthrosis may be the cause of that narrowing but as I just said I don’t think surgery will be helpful.”

“I’m relieved,” I replied. “Spinal surgery sounds risky.”

Unimpressed by my comment, the doctor gave me a blank look and added:

“In any case, I will discuss this with my colleagues and we’ll talk about it later.”

I was never to see Dr. Sharp again. I often wondered if that hospital didn’t hide some kind of “Bermuda Triangle” that mysteriously swallowed up doctors.

The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda where many ships and aircraft have vanished. Some people believe that the Earth’s magnetic field is to blame for these incidents. This might also explain the shortage of doctors in hospitals.

That morning my friend Lucide called me on my cellphone to see how I was and to find out if I had been given a room. I took the opportunity to ask her to bring me some ibuprofen to relieve my aching body.

While I was on the phone a man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows rushed in.

“So, are you ready for your surgery?”

“What surgery?” I said, startled.

“Well, the operation on your spine to get rid of your nasty arthrosis, of course!”

“I thought this procedure wouldn’t be necessary! But first of all, who are you sir?”

“My name is Dr. Backridge and I am a neurologist. Who told you this operation would be unnecessary?”

“Erm... It was doctor... Huh... I can’t recall his name but he was some kind of brain surgeon who came to visit me this morning,” I said, befuddled. “You’ll probably find his name in my file.”

“I never read patients’ files, they’re totally unreliable,” the doctor said with a twitch. “So? Do you agree? Can I book the operating room?”

I felt cornered. I am not impulsive by nature and, right at that moment, I did not have all the information to make such a serious decision and weigh its consequences objectively.

The doctor was rocking nervously on his heels while tapping with a pen on a clipboard.

“Dr. Backridge, can you guarantee arthrosis is the cause of my illness?”

“A 100% guarantee? No, I can’t say that for sure but it’s a possible cause.”

“Doctor, I hope you can understand how I feel. Right now I can’t walk and I’m afraid that if I get this operation I will never be able to walk again.”

The doctor gave me a fierce look.

“Listen sir, don’t waste my time. If you don’t agree to this surgery, I can see only one explanation...”

“Which is?”

“You’re putting on an act! You’re faking!” he snapped.
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He then turned and left abruptly, his white smock flapping behind him like the wings of a giant bird. He made me think of a seagull that comes out of nowhere, making a lot of noise, shits everywhere and leaves as he had come without ever accomplishing anything.

“I would not mind if this doctor got lost in the Bermuda Triangle,” I thought.

Seagulls have existed for at least 30 million years. This bird with the obnoxious squawking can be found anywhere there is a lot of water. It will eat anything but seems to enjoy feeding on human garbage.

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To be continued in: Hospital Diaries VI: The Overflow

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Mexican Rabbits

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My wife and I had been separated for about two months and I was living in an unremarkable and noisy bachelor apartment in a depressing neighbourhood.

There were about 40 apartments in the building where I was. My neighbours directly above me – a young Mexican couple, the Conejos – were polite and spoke in a nasal Spanish gibberish which I could not understand at all.

One night around 11:00, I was sleeping on the couch when their relentless lovemaking woke me up.

“Ain’t love great when it’s well made,” I thought, annoyed by their indecent sighs.

I tried in vain to get back to sleep. After awhile I decided to go out to read in a café until my neighbours’ Mexican hormones calmed down.

There was a coffee shop a short 20 minutes walk away. It was one of those franchised chains lit by crude fluorescent lights where young people in ill-fitting uniforms served the dark beverage in paper cups. It was open all night and smokers were relegated to a packed glass-enclosed room while the rest of the restaurant was empty.

One would think that following the smoking ban in public places coffee shops would have lost all their clientele as coffee without cigarettes is just not the same thing. I guess people are quick to give up life’s simple pleasures. Many thanks to Zebra Jay for the photo.

I entered the cramped smoking room with a coffee and a copy of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, hoping that the Swiss-German author’s eastern wisdom would help me forget the emptiness I felt.

Sitting at a table for four, two girls were talking.

— A funny thing happened to me at work, one of the girls said. After my shift, while I was changing in the backroom, Jason snuck in and took me from behind!

— Ah! Ah! That’s typical! scoffed the other one, Jason always does that!

I could not believe my ears. Here I was in a crowded public place and people were actually having this kind of conversation oblivious to their surroundings! I tried to focus on my book, lit another cigarette and took a sip of coffee. I was there to clear my mind after all.

I managed to follow Harry, Steppenwolf’s main character, as he was caught in his personal ontological maze. I had almost forgotten the girls’ obscene conversation when two guys joined them. I did not pay much attention until the girl who was groped by Jason got up to use the ladies’ room.

The two young men and the other girl looked lustily at her leaving.

When she came back, she said:

— So, what were you talking about?

— We were saying your ass looks great in those jeans, said one of the guys.

She immediately responded:

— You know why? It’s because I’m not wearing panties!

Flustered, I went back to my book, lit another cigarette, gulped some lukewarm coffee and really tried hard to think about anything else. Oddly, Tales of Ordinary Madness, Charles Bukowski’s famous short stories collection, came to my mind.

Maybe I needed to meet my Hermine, the Steppenwolf character who helped Harry to come to grip with his situation and learn to enjoy life again.

My predicament was not the same however. I was not depressed nor suicidal, I was only bitterly disappointed that my marriage had failed. And now, because of the Mexican rabbits who lived upstairs and those kids sitting at the coffee shop, I was entertaining lewd thoughts that were rubbing raw my feelings of loneliness.

Rabbits (conejo in Spanish) are not rodents. Rodents have incisors that are continually growing and needing to be ceaselessly worn down. Rabbits have two sets of incisors one behind the other. The female rabbit ovulates by reflex and can give birth to up to 12 kits three times a year.

I did not feel like myself anymore.

Finally the youths got up and left. Relieved, I tried to focus on my book again.

That’s when four ladies in their fifties coming back from bingo sat next to me and passionately discussed the most efficient manner to pleasure themselves with a hand-held shower head.

That was it, I had had enough. I closed my book, put out my cigarette, finished drinking my coffee and left, glad I had not brought a Henry Miller novel instead of Steppenwolf.

:Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980) was a prolific American author whose books were banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity until 1961. A couple of years later, western high courts rendered that kind of obscenity obsolete. The times, as the song says, they were a-changing.

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Vision Quest

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In my head there is an English garden in which wander all the people I loved in my past but who are no longer alive.

You see, I do not believe people ever die and neither will I. I will simply waste time and space in the head of somebody unfortunate enough to have loved me and will probably bring with me all the people who are currently walking around aimlessly in my brain.

This is how a robust collective unconscious is built.

I woke up in the middle of the night last Sunday, got up and saw the moon peeking through the window as my maternal grandfather was idly strolling between my brain cells.

My grandfather did everything according to the moon. By looking at the moon, he knew when it was time to get a haircut, to start haying the fields, to slaughter the pig. The moon also told him when the snow would fall, when the cow would calve, and when the maple tree sap would start to flow in the spring.

For my part, I notice that a full moon or a new moon bring with them colder or warmer temperatures.

The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BC) reasoned that the Moon was a gigantic rock that reflected the light from the sun. All who believed the Moon was made of green cheese were bitterly disappointed by this discovery.

Several years ago, I was attending a rave that the son of a friend organized in a secluded valley in the countryside. Hundreds of people came from all over North America to dance to the grooves of legendary DJs from Europe, Australia, the United States and Japan.

Sparks from a huge bonfire rose upward into the night sky while people walked around carrying torches. Gregorian chants that the DJ played on a background of “drum and bass” added a mystical feeling.

I started talking to an old Inuit from Nunavut. I told him that my grandfather lived according to what the Moon was telling him.

“The Moon has nothing to say,” the old man replied. “The stars hold all wisdom.”

Then, Natalie, the old man’s granddaughter – 30 years old and sweet as could be – offered me some of those dried mushrooms that take you to another level.

I do not approach psychedelic drugs casually. As a teenager I viewed drugs, rightly or wrongly, as the key that opened the door to the gods when one needed a special revelation. Since the gods are very powerful and very busy, I always thought they should not be disturbed unnecessarily.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms are found everywhere in the world in more than 200 species. The psychoactive element of this fungus is called psilocybin, an alkaloid with pharmacodynamic properties. As you can see from what I just wrote, to truly understand what they are doing, drug users should hold a degree in pharmacology or chemistry. Many thanks to WPClipart for making this public domain image available

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That night, I felt the time was right for revelations. I accepted Natalie’s offer and she poured a few grams of dried mushrooms in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me like a lot but Natalie took my arm and said:

– It’s only residue. Nunavut mushrooms are very mild, don’t worry.

I chewed conscientiously and then swallowed the mushroom crumbs. Natalie and I sat on a downed tree trunk looking at the bonfire and people dancing, and waited for the mushrooms to work their magic.

We talked a little and I was feeling good. Natalie’s grandfather was standing nearby. He slowly raised his head and hands to the sky. He was different: he was now dressed in deerskins and was quietly singing in his language, shuffling his feet on the ground.

He was talking to the stars.

I watched him intently. I was no longer hearing the DJs’ music: only the soft song of the old Inuit was filling my ears.

My nose was itchy. Maybe it had been stung by a mosquito and now it was wet, probably because I scratched it until it bled. It was beginning to swell.

Actually, it was not swelling: it was GROWING.

I thought this was peculiar but interesting. I did not know where I was anymore. Everything started to waver rapidly and I fell on all fours. My face was turning into a snout and I was shivering as my skin was being covered with some kind of grey fur. I did not feel uncomfortable at all and strangely I was not afraid: this metamorphosis seemed to me absolutely in order. I began to howl gently.

The old Inuit was chanting and dancing by my side, beating on a drum as an accompaniment. For my part, I had turned completely into a coyote and my howling harmonized with the old man’s chanting.

Coyotes (canis latrans) can be found everywhere in North America. They are related more to the jackal than to the wolf. Coyotes are not an endangered species and sometimes mate with housedogs. In Germany, I’m told, coyotes have been crossbred with poodle dogs, probably to annoy the French. Many thanks to WPClipart for making this public domain image available.

I don’t know how long our performance lasted. All I know is that everything turned dark and when I gained consciousness, I was lying naked in a haystack in Natalie’s arms, still high from the magic mushrooms from Nunavut.

A few days later, back in town, I told my story to my friend Aaron who told me:

– Obviously you saw your totem...

– My totem? No, no, It was not a carved pole of scowling beasts with protruding eyes. I really turned into a coyote!

– A totem, you simpleton, is a protective spirit in North American Indian folklore. In your case, it seems your totem is the coyote. Unfortunate. You could have chosen better...

– I don’t understand...

– My poor friend, you never learned anything. The coyote is a deceiver, a trickster, a bit like Papa Legba in voodoo. The coyote stole fire from the Gods to give to mankind...

– Like Prometheus in Greek mythology, I wondered aloud to show that I had some cultural knowledge after all.

– If you say so, but the coyote keeps breaking rules, playing tricks even if his tricks have sometimes positive effects.

On my own after Aaron left, I thought about his last words and about the unorthodox path I had followed in life. To free myself from the constraint of rules, I often downgraded them to simple guidelines or mere suggestions, never hesitating to ignore them to achieve a goal I felt was more desirable.

“A wild dog as a protective spirit: I could have done worse,” I thought.

Totem poles carved by Pacific Northwest American Indians are monuments sculpted from large cedar trees representing the protective spirit of their tribe but also to serve as witnesses to major historical events or even as tombs for their ancestors. Totem pole carved by Mr. Henry Hunt (1923-1985) of the Kwawkewith Indian Band, British Columbia, Canada.

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The Refrigerator

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Eventually everything goes to rot as long as bacteria is provided with food, moisture, heat and time. For instance, take the delicious seafood fettucini that you forgot in a plastic container on the kitchen counter before leaving for a 3-week summer vacation.

Fettucini (Italian for "little ribbons") is one of the 310 specific forms of Italian pasta. To complicate matters there are 1300 different names to describe these different kinds of unleavened dough. Pasta can be served with a sauce, in soup or baked. Seafood include fish, mollusks and crustaceans.

Upon your return, it is most likely that decomposition would be so well underway that the cover of the container would have popped open from the decaying gases and that a foul odour would be pervading your once sweet-smelling apartment.

From time immemorial, civilization has unsparingly devoted energy and creativity to food preservation. Salting, drying, pickling are all processes developed to keep foodstuffs edible. Comes a time however when you get tired of eating dried meat, pickled herring and catching gout from eating too much cured venison.

Fortunately someone discovered cooling and freezing.

About 1700 years B.C. in the Middle East, bell-shaped buildings started to appear. With thick walls and insulating materials (such as sawdust or straw) these buildings allowed the preservation of snow and ice throughout spring and summer.

In the United States and Canada specially insulated buildings were built, usually near lakes, to store ice as household supplies until the middle of the 20th century. When electricity made its way into houses and refrigerators became common appliances, this industry became obsolete.

Today refrigerators are taken for granted. I am even told that some ladies will measure the quality of a suitor according to the cleanliness and content of their fridge. Gentlemen, please take heed and do not forget to also clean your bathroom and change the sheets in the bed.

It only takes a few weeks for rotting food to attempt to emerge from a plastic container forgotten on a kitchen counter. I wonder however how long it would take for provisions to open the door of a refrigerator in which they were left to decay.

It seems to me this would be the kind of experiment Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, would have enjoyed, he who once said: “In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) with his wife Marie-Anne explaining to him why it is important to keep a refrigerator clean. Mr. Lavoisier, was a chemist but also a tax collector, an unpopular trade that probably caused him to be guillotined during the French Revolution.

A few weeks ago, I invited a few friends for dinner. I was to serve the seafood fettucini that I referred to earlier. However, because I had to go away for two days before the dinner date, I purchased the scallops, shrimps, crab and other ingredients in advance and placed them in the back of the fridge.

I came back Friday night, the day before the dinner. There was a strange smell in the apartment but it was late, I was exhausted so I postponed an investigation until the next day.

Saturday morning, I was awakened by a stench. Feeling sick, I wondered where the foul odour was coming from. While making coffee, I opened the refrigerator door to get milk and I was assaulted by the bacteriological process that had been underway for two days, starting when the appliance’s compressor failed.

Antoine Lavoisier could probably tell you that a refrigerator transforms heat into cold through a compressor that overheats a cooling liquid, turning it into gas that cools off going through a coil while becoming liquid once again.

The compressor failure raised the temperature inside the fridge to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit: a perfect environment for bacteria proliferation.

Refraining from throwing up, I emptied the content of the refrigerator into plastic bags that I carried outside to the shed where I keep my garbage until pick-up day. Then I called my guests to explain what happened and rescheduled the dinner invitation. I spent the rest of the day shopping for a refrigerator.

During the night, I was suddenly awakened by loud crashing sounds outside. I quickly dressed and went down to see what was happening.

A black bear, attracted by the smell of spoilage, was having a feast in my garbage. When it saw me, it cocked its head, surprised by the interruption, then went back to its banquet, totally ignoring me.

I did not know what to do when a bear strays onto one’s property. Should I call the Wildlife Service? At 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday, I doubted anybody would answer. Should I call 9-1-1? In my view, having a bear stealing your garbage is not an emergency and in Canada it is a crime to call 9-1-1 unless there’s an emergency.

So I decided to let nature be and allowed the beast to finish its meal. The next morning would be soon enough to assess the situation.

The black bear (ursus americanus) is not an endangered species in North America and unfortunately gets used too easily to human presence. Many thanks to ZebraJay for the photo.

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The Deer Hunter

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For Yves. Many thanks to Lucy.

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One summer evening as I was on my way to my haunted house in the country. I was negotiating a long curve on the highway around a steep hill in my 1983 Renault Alliance. To my left, the sun was setting. As I was pulling down the sun visor I saw a shadow in the corner of my right eye.

BANG! I hit the jumping deer at 60 miles per hour. The windshield exploded and instantly the inside of the car was filled with flying hair and the musky smell of the wild animal. I slowed down to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

I got out of the car as other motorists whizzed by and the unfortunate doe was quivering on the median strip of the highway, gasping out her last breath. Massaging the back of my neck, I slowly walked around to see the damage.

The windshield had completely shattered and tufts of hair were caught in the cracks of the glass. The right fender was torn and one of the headlights was dangling. There were deep dents in the hood and on the top of the car as well as nasty scratches on the trunk hatch.

“This is what happens when Mother Nature takes on Motor Trends’ Car of the Year,” I thought.

The Renault Alliance was actually a Renault 9 re-packaged for North American markets following a partnership agreement between Renault and American Motors. Sold from 1983-1987, the hastily-designated "Car of the year" proved to be a nightmare for many owners because of chronic head gasket, clutch, transmission, suspension and exhaust problems. Very few are still on the road nowadays.

One car stopped and the driver asked if I needed assistance. I said I was fine, but I asked him to call the police so I could make a report for the insurance company.

I waited for over an hour before the police cruiser arrived. The sun had set, the sky was clouding over and it was obvious that it would rain soon. I answered the officer’s questions while he filled in his report. Then we walked to the median to look at the beast that had wrecked my car.

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was lying on its side, flies buzzing around its open eyes and foamy mouth. I thought it would be a shame to let 100 lbs. of good venison go to waste so I asked the young police officer to give me a hand carrying the carcass to my car.

The white-tailed deer is found in abundant quantities in America from Canada to Peru. It is a least-concern species in terms of conservation status since its principal predator is probably the automobile.

– Erm, I’m not sure about that sir. Hunting season is not yet open and you should report this killing to the Wildlife Service.

– But I was not hunting, it was an accident...

– Yeah, well, in any case, I think the Wildlife Service has to offer roadkill to public institutions first, you know, prisons, hospitals, orphanages...

Not wanting to be responsible for Oliver Twist starving to death and knowing better than to argue with the Law, I did not insist and asked the officer for a ride to a garage where I could get a tow truck.

– No need for a tow truck if you can start the engine, he said.

– But there’s no windshield on the car and only one headlight...

– You’ll be all right, good evening sir.

He left me on the side of the road while the rain started falling. I got into the car, turned on the ignition and drove 15 miles under the rain with no windscreen. I smelled like a wet dog when I arrived home.

The next day, after calling the insurance company to report the accident, I asked a friend to pick me up so I could rent a car to keep me mobile while waiting for the insurers’ damage assessment. My friend was glad I was unharmed and invited me to come for dinner later that night.

I arrived at his home around 6:00 PM with a bottle of wine but something was not right. His 5 year old daughter Mary-Ann who considered me as her uncle did not greet me as usual; in fact she avoided me, sulking.

As my friend’s wife was opening the bottle of wine and I was telling her that it might take weeks before I knew exactly what the actual damage to the car was, Mary-Ann came to me in tears, holding her teddy bear and asked:

– Is it true that you killed Bambi?

I was shocked as I looked at my friend who was suppressing a laugh. What a terrible thing to say to his own daughter! I then explained to Mary-Ann that it was not actually Bambi I killed but a distant, very old and very sick cousin and that I did not do it on purpose, that it was an accident and that I made sure the deer received a proper and dignified burial. Giving my friend a dirty look I then assured the little girl that I was really, really sorry and that I would have much preferred that the whole thing had not happened and would she please forgive me?

I guess she sensed my alleged contrition because she gave me a hug and we were able to move on to the dinner table.

A week later the insurance company informed me the car was a total loss and that they would cover for the rental car until I found a replacement.

I bought a used 1986 Pontiac Acadian, a sub-compact built like a tank.

The Pontiac Acadian is the Canadian equivalent of the Chevrolet Chevette. A sturdy car with lots of steel and very little plastic, it was built until 1986. It was characterized by a very roomy engine compartment. In fact the person I sold it to replaced the original 1.6 litre 4-cylinder engine with a more powerful V6 engine without further modifications.

A few days after I got that car, I was coming back from driving a friend to the other side of town at around 10:00 PM. There was a group of young people playfully wrestling at a bus stop on my right and a car waiting for me to pass at a cross street ahead.

BANG! I hit a german shepherd that came running out of a dark alley to my left. I had never had a car accident in my life and now in the space of two weeks I had hit two animals in a row! I parked my car by the curb and went to inspect the damage. The left headlight was broken and that was all. Then I walked over to the dead dog.

The youths had hopped onto a bus that was now driving by and there was nobody around. No cops, no Wildlife Officers and Oliver Twist was nowhere in sight.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of taking the carcass home, having it for supper and asking a taxidermist to stuff the head for mounting on the wall.

The Adventures of Oliver Twist, published in 1838, was Charles Dickens' second novel. It related the story of a young orphan in the shady 19th century London.

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The mighty bison

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Version française

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Over half a century has already gone by since I was born... So many things can change in only 50 years.

For example 50 years was all it took to reduce the over 100 million American bison (bison bison) that once roamed North America’s plains to only a handful.

The mighty bison: Manitoba’s provincial emblem, the fierce bovine that adorns Wyoming’s State flag and the livelihood of “Buffalo” Bill Cody and generations of Native Americans was indeed the ruler of American prairies. Having few predators, apart from the grizzly bear and the wolf, they were quite happy grazing, resting, and chewing their cud before moving on to other pastures.

Their sheer size – a male Plains bison (bison bison bison – whoever comes up with Latin names for species obviously lacks imagination from time to time) is typically 2,000 pounds – their bad temper when annoyed, their speed and agility (a bison runs at 40 mph and can jump six feet high) and their tendency to stampede when incommoded by insects make them animals you do not want to cross.

A Plains bison can be recognized from a Wood bison (bison bison athabascae) by its size (the Plains bison is smaller) and the shape of its hump, which is rounded while the Wood bison’s hump is squared. Both are irritable.

For the American bison, gestation is 285 days and a bull is able to mate at three years of age. However, in a herd, the more mature bulls will exercise their authority to prevent the younger ones from mating. Therefore, until he is old and big enough, a male bison will be relegated to lustily watch the cows for his elders while practicing his reproductive technique on dismayed smaller bulls.

The 19th century was not a good time for the American bison. European settlers were moving west, encountering Natives who were reluctant to give up their space to accommodate the newcomers’ hunger for land. Reservations were created to confine the Aboriginals but for those who still insisted on living in their homeland, it was decided to starve them by killing the bison on which they heavily depended for food and trade.

To make matters worse for the emblematic ungulate, the new Americans were laying down hundreds of miles of railroad tracks wherever they went, often taking advantage of bison trails left bare between migrations.

As any migratory animal, the American bison liked their trails and wanted to re-use them, railroad tracks or not. Do you know how hard it is to keep a reliable train schedule when bison herds keep crossing the tracks according to their whim? Thus, there was another excellent reason for hunting them.

Finally, the industrial revolution gave the American bison the coup de grâce.

The new steam and combustion engines needed sturdy drive belts for connecting their spinning gears. The best belts were made with thick bison hides. Also, as the manufacturing sector’s productivity was improved by motorized factories, many new goods that required assembly were put on the market. Submitted to hydrolysis, bison bones produced collagen which made excellent glue to join parts together. Those were the days before duct tape, Velcro and tie-wraps, when securing parts was somewhat troublesome.

Buffalo bones are being loaded in a Canadian Pacific railway car to be shipped to a glue factory. Credit: Library and Archives Canada / PA-066544

For those reasons the hunting continued until the entire American bison population was worn down to a mere few specimen.

Fortunately, as the legend goes, in 1881 a South Dakota farmer purchased the last five remaining bison calves and thus preserved the species. Within 30 years there was a herd of about 1,000 bisons grazing the great American plains again.

However this led to a new controversy. Following DNA testing it was found that some bison genes had been polluted by regular cattle genes. I mean, if you are a 600 pounds Jersey cow grazing and you suddenly realize there is a one-ton lonely bison bull, who is tired of humping his male counterparts in the mud and who is giving you sweet looks from the other side of a fence that he can easily jump over, what are you supposed to do?

The Jersey cow is popular because of the quality of its dairy output, small size and high fertility rate. Offsprings of ordinary cattle and bison are sometimes called beefallo.

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