CHUI SUI CENTRAL

Waiting for a steak from heaven

Nury Vittachi complains that he has never been hit by a cow from the sky

Like many people, I regularly look up to the heavens and say “why has a cow never fallen on me?” One of the main reasons discerning consumers like me chose to live on planet Earth is that life here is full of delightful surprises. Whales explode, dumb criminals break into police stations, religious images appear on pizzas and most memorably of all, large animals fall on us out of clear blue skies. Life, there’s nothing really quite like it.

But it can be unfair. The other day I was lamenting that no beast has ever fallen out of the sky on me, with the exception of an incident when I was nine, when a love-crazed young woman in my class leapt on me from a tree giving me a life-long fear of trees, women, the sky and let’s face it, life in general.

The same cannot be said about a man motoring down the highway in Changchun, China. His journey was interrupted by a cow descending out of the blue and landing on the hood of his car. The cow, which police speculate may have fallen out of a speeding truck and somehow bounced into the air, had no motor insurance, third-party or otherwise.

In the US state of Washington, a large object fell from the sky onto the roof of a minivan belonging to Charles and Linda Everson. Mr Everson 49, got out of the car to see what had hit it and his wife heard him repeating, “I don’t believe it,” according to media reports. She joined him to find it was, yes, another cow. Police suspect the 300-kilogram beast threw itself off a nearby cliff, possibly distraught over the results of Australian MasterChef.

In Alaska, a flying moose crash-landed in front of state trooper Howard Peterson. He told reporters that the moose, considered primarily a land animal, can soar through the air. “They can fly and they can land,” he told the Anchorage Daily News. “Just not very well.”

Similar incidents take place in Europe. Norway resident Leo Henriksen was enjoying a leisurely Sunday drive with his wife when a 350-kilogram moose landed on their car. People are always going on and on about how brilliant Japanese cars are, but the wreckage made it clear that the manufacturer, Mazda Corp, neglected to include any sort of protection from giant descending mammals. Hard to believe, I know.

Asia, of course, is the World Capital of Bizarre Road Hazards. In this region, my road journeys have been interrupted by the sudden emergence of monkeys, elephants, wildebeest, and scariest of all leaping herds of demonstrators demanding more repression. (This is surprisingly common in Asia.)

Some years ago I reported on a traffic accident involving a collision between a small truck and a large fish. It sounds odd until I tell you that it happened in Bangladesh, where it makes perfect sense. Several districts in that country cannot make up their minds as to whether they are land or sea and shift from one to another at a moment’s notice. One recent summer, frogs and toads fell from the skies on and off for a whole month in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. In February a few years ago, fish twice rained down in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Over a bowl of noodles at a hawker center, I brought up this subject and several diners shared tales of strange items falling from the sky, ranging from cash to children. “People hang their clothes out to dry and things fall out of the pockets,” a diner explained.

A week later, I had a personal experience of a gift from the skies. I was being driven along a highway in Hong Kong behind a truck containing live fish headed for a restaurant. It went over a bump. A surprised-looking garoupa flew into the air and then slapped onto our windscreen. It bounced away before I could claim it for lunch.

I have invested in steak sauce and a roof rack. Somewhere, my cow is waiting.

Nury Vittachi is an award-winning author and journalist based in Hong Kong. He is best known for his comedy-crime novel series, The Feng Shui Detective. Contact him via nury@vittachi.com or through his public Facebook page.