Cows 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 really nothing 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 girl of my age leapt on me from a tree, giving me a life-long fear of trees, women, the sky and, let's face it, life.
The same cannot be said about a man motoring down the highway in Changchun, China last year. 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 voting results of American Idol.
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, at great inconvenience to residents.
In June last year, frogs and toads fell from the skies on and off for a whole month in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.
In February this year, fish twice rained down in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Over a bowl of noodles at a hawker centre, I brought up this subject and several diners shared tales of strange items falling from the sky in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China, 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.
But it did suggest that my luck with regard to falling foodstuffs is changing.
I have invested in steak sauce and a roof rack. Somewhere, my cow is waiting.

For more disorientated form of rainfall, visit our columnist at: www.vittachi,com.