I was reminded today about how Canadian we Canadians can be.
I was walking near Yonge & Bloor St. in downtown Toronto (probably one of the busiest intersections in Canada) the other day and turned my head at the sound of gasping and shrieking tires. What is an accident? A hit and run? No... it was much worse.
A groundhog was caught in traffic.
Imagine a flock of curious onlookers, holding its collective breath as the groundhog darted from underneath one car to the next, as they stopped in order to avoid hitting it. Soon, that section of the street was completely backed up as people from the crowd were trying to somehow grab this thing. They were trying to work in teams. One guy found a big box. One guy was directing cars to slowly move up. Another one had taken off his casual shirt to use as a... hunting blanket of some sort.
It just goes to show how we can be so compassionate towards certain things, especially if they are 'cute' and fuzzy***. I see people swearing at each other on the road all the time downtown: drivers to drivers, bikers to drivers, drivers to bikers, etc. A friend of mine told me about this incident, where an ex-cop tried to grab a guy's bicycle and started to fight him for stopping at the yellow light at the intersection, instead of coasting through. Are we so jaded that we will fight each other, but risk our lives in traffic for a damn animal??
I was surprised how calm the traffic was during the groundhog ordeal. Drivers were waiting patiently while traffic was stopped as these 'heroes' were trying to save this animal. The crowd started to gather up quickly as their attempts to trap the groundhog proved unfruitful. I'm sure the thing was going to die of shock anyway. To be perfectly honest (and cruel), it probably would have been best if it had died quickly. But what happened? It ended up getting smoked by a car, but was just crippled. Ouch.
You are a martyr, my sweet rodent prince. You've accomplished more than most people will do in their entire lives, rallying complete strangers for a common good. Now someone get a hose.
*** Here's a transcript from a timeless Denis Leary skit, talking about how we only want to save the cute animals:
"Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He's so cute. My fluffy little dog.. He's so cute- There's the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don't we? Yeah. Why don't we just have animal auditions. Line 'em up one by one and interview them individually. "What are you?" "I'm an otter." "And what do you do?" "I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands." "You're free to go." "And what are you?" "I'm a cow." "Get in the fucking truck, ok pal!" "But I'm an animal." "You're a baseball glove! Get on that truck!" "I'm an animal, I have rights!" "Yeah, here's yer fucking cousin, get on the fucking truck, pal!" We kill the cows to make jackets out of them and then we kill each other for the jackets we made out of the cows."
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9 comments:
Here is one question for you: imagine that some of the worst drivers in the city are cute and fuzzy beavers, would you be upset with them if they curse at you for walking too slow? What if they happen to be good friends with the Bell sensations Frank & Gordon,too?
And then if you yelled back at the beaver driver for cursing, his wife, an otter gave you a finger in a very cute way. Will you still be mad?
If I saw Frank and Gordon on the road, I would speed up. Then back up over them....
Although the idea of cursing beavers is most excellent.
Tony, I barely believe this story. It doesn't make any sense. What was a groundhog doing on Yonge and Bloor? did you put it there so you could write this post?
I did... and I'll do it again.
There are surprisingly quite a few animals running around downtown, mostly skunks though. And they're huge!
There's an obvious joke here about fuzzy beavers, as Oddtree Baa Har mentioned, but I won't go there.
That kind of trapped beaver would definitely stop some traffic.
Hahahaha, touché.
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