Of all the things that could smash a car’s windshield in Saskatchewan, a fish that fell from the sky is pretty low on the list of likely suspects.
But that’s what happened to Marie Ahlstrom when she was driving home on Sept. 19 near Turtle Lake, Sask., about 200 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
“You could actually see the impression of the fish scales in the windshield,” said Ahlstrom, who was unharmed.
She initially assumed a rock had hit the car, but when she saw the blood, she said she knew it had to be something else. Then when Ahlstrom got home, she and her husband were able to assess the damage and find what remained of the fish.
The fish had damaged the windshield as well as the side mirror of the car. Ahlstrom said there was some confusion when she tried to make the wildlife collision claim under her insurance, with one adjustor telling her fish isn ’t wildlife, but that it got sorted out.
Ahlstrom said falling fish are not common, but she has heard of it before in the Turtle Lake area.
She said birds in the area, particularly osprey, are known to occasionally scoop up fish too heavy for them to carry, causing them to drop the fish.
“You could find a fish in your yard, and a good friend of ours a few years ago found one in the eavestroughing of his house,” Ahlstrom said.
CBC News asked Trevor Herriot, a prairie naturalist and author, what he thought.
“It has to have been an eagle,” he said. “There is nobody else except for ospreys that do that kind of fishing … but most ospreys have migrated south by now. There might be a few left, but I’d say odds are that it was a bald eagle.”
Herriot said the only other possible explanation would be a water spout from the lake, a phenomenon that has been known to occasionally pick up fish and throw them great distances . But he said that possibility is highly unlikely, given the weather at the time of the incident.
Whatever the cause, Ahlstrom found some humour in the situation.
“I don’t know if it was wildlife or an act of God or an act of fear,” she said, “but something dropped that fish and scared the heck out of me.”
The Morning Edition – Sask4:20Turtle Lake women had the surprise of her life when a fish shattered her windshield
Marie Ahlstrom from Turtle Lake was driving home from a friend’s house, when a fish suddenly fell from the sky and smashed her windshield. Her insurance was hesitant to cover the costs due to fish not being considered wildlife in their policies.
