Humour in life

[Robin4]

We Australians are fortunate in that there is a funny side to almost everything in life.

I travel through this area frequently, it is about 40 Kms north from my home and when I saw this bit of road kill on the side of the road, I couldn't help linking the two!

This is a large country, it's the same size as the US. Where would we be without the good ol' Aussie 'mudmap'!

Here in Australia our national mail delivery service is called 'ironically' Australia Post, and their slogan is...."We Deliver"!

With the advent of, firstly, fax and then email their volume of business and quality of service have deteriorated to the point where we say....

Deliver?.....yeah....Pigs might fly!

Makes a great intelligent use for an old 'out of date' gas bottle though.

It even accepts junk mail...... which when you come to think of it, is about 95% of what Australia Post delivers anyway!

Cheers......Rob

[Sue383]

When my now husband was taking me out for our first posh meal together soon after we met - he was driving along the country lane and just managed to swerve around a hedghog in the middle of the lane. As much to impress me with his care for animals, he stopped and said he would move it off the road.  By then we had gone on quite a few metres so he started to back up - splat!!!! Poor hedgehog.

[Robin4]

@Sue383.....Now Sue, you have been around long enough to know there is an old expression....

"No good deed goes unpunished"!! Lovely story though, hahaha, how did he handle the situation once he realised he had ruffled a spine or two?

Here in Australia we have a relation to the hedgehog called an Echidna! I did (accidentally) run over one once and my God it sounded like a roll of barbed wire cattering its way under the car as I went over it! But, hardy little soul, it just uncurled itself, waddled off the road and went about the business of 'Echidna-ing'!

Thanks Sue.

Cheers.....Rob

[Robin4]

@Kimberly54

Yeah but Kim, they only do that in America, and I just knew that @Rene-and-Zac0, with her genius would come up with something like that, I laughed like the proverbial when I saw that....not so much for the obvious statement that it made but, here in OZ I would be in the paupers court if I decorated every crunched roo that I came across with a helium balloon....those metalic ones with a bit of writing on them cost a bob or two you know!

People do have a differing perception of how to react to an animal that has been run over. 

Kangaroos, as I have said are so prolific that vehicle after vehicle gradually turns them into kangaroo steak pies, but on the freeway every now and then a Koala will get hit, and nobody else wants to actually run over it again. To get out of a car to render assistance on the freeway is a shortcut to the hererafter, so, a Koala body will sit intact on the pavement for considerable days as drivers do their best not follow in the tyreprints of the culprit who hit it!

Cheers.....Rob

[Kimberly54]

@Robin4, thanks for the education!  I had no idea people did this kind of silly ritual around road-kill here.  (OK, the road crew painting over a dead armadillo?  Had to be Tennessee, and I'm surprised the line was reasonably straight!)

I don't know if you've read any of my past posts about my neighborhood being a branch of the United Nations (amazing!), but one of 'us' are Philippine immigrant/citizens, and the kids once told a very funny story about hitting an animal while driving... then slowing the car down... everyone looking at each other... "let's go back and get it!"  I don't remember what kind of animal it was (probably didn't matter).  We laughed our heads off! 

Wow...come to think of it, I don't remember who was cooking that night...

PLEASE DON'T START A FOOD TANGENT!  Would be EXCEEDINGLY FUNNY/scary.

Best,

[Sandra126]

@Kimberly54, How to cook road kill: https://www.amazon.com/Original-Road-Kill-Cookbook/dp/0898152003

Has been around for a few years now. Happy reading!

[Kimberly54]

Dear me, @Sandra126,  I actually bought this book for my husband (hunter, but not road-kill type)!

Oh my...

[Rosemarie9]

Thanks for a good laugh on a day I really needed one. Happy St Patrick's Day Robin, from a fellow Aussie host living in Kinsale, Ireland. I so miss all the Aussie wildlife, as it is quite sedate here in Ireland with the local foxes crossing my garden nightly and the hedgehog parties being held in my garden cuttings collection. My pup Curly Murphy didn't know what to make of his first hedgehog encounter, he growled perplexed at the little rolled up thing. I think he misses the possums and raucous kookaburras and cockatoo's like me. I forgot how much junk mail I used to get in Sydney, the old gas tank is perfect! 

[Helga0]

Thanks for the laugh! 

Once, my husband dropped me off at the airport and returned home through fog and night. There was a building site on the highway, fences down and a family of wild pigs used that breach to cross the road. He was not driving very fast there, but saw them late. He could not avoid all of them. The car hit probably two of them in a glazing blow. They run off, but the car was heavily damaged, the front was crushed, no light, the car much shorter than before. Douglas slept in the car till dawn, on a parking area close to the accident site. In the morning, he connected a rope between the car front and a tree and drove backwards carefully, till the car had nearly the same lenght as before. He could drive home. 

When he had the car repaired, they laughed, because he was not the first victim there. Another car had hit a boar frontally and it was dead on the road. The driver and his friend decided to have at least dinner from all the damages and they loaded it into the trunk. A few miles later, the stunned boar woke up and panicked in the trunk. They stopped, but by then the pig had already broken the lid from inside, jumped out and run away. That car needed two repairs and a creative explanation for the insurance, why the car hit pigs with the front end and the rear end. 

[Robin4]

@Helga0 @Fred126 @Kimberly54 @Sandra126

Gosh Helga, maybe we should tell Australia Post about this breach in the road barrier!

I am however at a loss for words about that boar exerting it's influence over the car boot lid though. The insurance company would have rejected the claim because the insured deliberately added to the scope of the claim by his subsequent actions! ;-((

I have told the story before but, like possum jokes it stands repeating.

I have a daughter in Sydney and travel by plane to see her a few times a year.

I was fed up with having to prop my butt on the loose broken toilet seat in her Bondi apartment, and as luck would have it, I had a brand new 'soft close' jobbie just sitting here at home....left over from a previous bathroom renovation.

I told her on my next trip over I would bring the redundant new toilet seat with me.

As I walked to the airport security I put my case on the xray scanner conveyer and watched it disappear into 'the tunnel of doom'! The conveyer stopped, backed up, moved forward a couple of times and eventually my suitcase emerged through the plastic ribbon wall where it was promptly seized by one of the milling security staff. I was motioned over to the conveyor....me one side and this official on the other. He said, "may I have a look in your suitcase sir"....not so much in the form of a request, more in the form of "OPEN THE BLOODY F........ THING"!!! Anyway, he rifled through my clothes until he came to the toilet seat and at that point we just looked at each other! Waiting for a response I said to him...." I have very clean habits, I don't travel without it"! For a second he had this perplexed look on his face!

You see, these guys are programmed for certain responses to regular situations, and I could clearly see this guy was way out of his depth....he was confronted by an object and a statement his previous training would not have addressed in a million years. Gathering his composure he studied it for a minute or so, shrugged his shoulders and probably thought...'I can't see it bring down an aircraft' and allowed me on my way.

But I can just imagine this guy finishing his shift, heading off home to his partner and family, gathering them all around and saying....."I will give 50 bucks to the first one of you to guess what I found in a passengers luggage today.....boom, boom!

Cheers.....Rob

[Kimberly54]

I actually feel somewhat relieved (after laughing so much) that I will NEVER see ALL of you in one place at the same time, else we would never sleep and... is it possible to die of laughter?

Possible.  I think... it might be possible...

@Robin4@Sandra126@Helga0@Rosemarie9@Fred126... dang that scroll-down... certain I'm missing more than one.

Best to you all,

[Helga0]

@Robin4, you sayyy it was for repairs. I always thought travelling with pillows was exaggerated ...

Funny exchange! I imagine you, deadpan with the guy coming down from high alert to wonder. 😉

When he was young, Douglas travelled with a shower head in France, as the chances to find a working one in a hotel were low. Easy to pack.

Even today, toilets in restaurants often have no seat. Seems easier to clean and they get broken quickly anyway.

You make me think of taking a seat with me when going for a long walk or dinner. Maybe I find a special purse,   Black rubber and rather large, round and flat?

[Robin4]

@Helga @Kimberly54 @Rene-and-Zac0

Helga you are way too elegant to be seen in public with a massive purse be it rubber, hide or fabric. I would suggest a generous attache case, maybe crocodile skin, I could possibly even arrange it with 'heels' to match. Oh boy, would you look the goods, hair piled high, outrageously painted nails, dressed in black.....security would be so dazzled by you they would totally pass over the inspection just to see you walk of into the distance towards your aircraft!!

There is something about the comfort of your own 'seat'. I am fortunate being a male I don't often have to come in close contact with one when out! I have the capacity to store a 'land-mine' for a day or two if required until I am home with my familiar surroundings.

Helga, I do know an excellent leather goods manufacturer should you require me to pursue this avenue further for you.....Just a slight word of caution though, his expertise is in the manufacture of 'Ugg Boots' so it may possibly be that the attache case may bulge a triffle in the middle! 

Cheers......Rob

[Rosemarie9]

Robin, I have been fighting to try and get the screw thingy off my broken toilet seat this week,got to find my pliers which have gone missing amongst my remodelling stint. Just wondering if you provide a fitting service or can bring one of those toilet seats to Ireland? Accommodation and all the Guinness you can drink included!!!

[Robin4]

@Rosemarie9 @Kimberly54

Now the problem as I see it Rosemarie is not so much getting it on the plane but getting it off again. The Irish immigration officials would possibly look on this object as a euthenasing device.....tie it to the nearest light pole, stick your head through the hole and jump. There has been a night or two in the past where Irish company is involved that I have ended up the evening with my head between a toilet seat!!!! 

Cheers.....Rob

Hey listen, I am loving this....things are a bit tough here at the moment....the one I love is slowly being taken away from me....the weather is giving me a 'pizzling'....no rain, I am being stretched further in a number of directions and I really really need to keep my sense of humour going! It would do no good to fall in a hole at this point.

But through this thread you can see how we have some great nights with guests here and it does the soul good to have a good laugh and loose yourself for an hour or two. 

I hope you don't me indulging myself a bit....I need to do it!

Cheers

[Rosemarie9]

It's the absurd that keeps us going sometimes when things are rough. Your sense of humour is a delightful thing. Indulge it anytime, I know it keeps us on the forum entertained. Should be more of it in the world.