When this happened I had never heard of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker before. One morning while going to Jonesboro to take care of some family business, I left my motel room in Hardy and started out to Jonesboro on my motorcycle. When I went though Black Rock and crossed the bridge doing about 65-70 mph about the time. I left the bridge and one of these woodpeckers flew out of the trees rather low and hit the bike on the front fender and glanced up and got caught in between the windsheild and turn signal by its leg. Before I got stopped, due to wind it had marred the paint on the tank and had broken the turn signal up pretty bad. (I replaced the turnsignal the next day). Anyway like I said I had never heard of one of the things before but I did know it was a woodpecker due to the coloration. Heres where it gets bad. I pulled out the now dead bird from the bike and tossed it to the side of the road and wiped the blood off the bike and my right side of my jacket. I went on about my business and never thought of it again until I saw all of the news hype on the TV about it.

Other than the wife this is the first time I have ever told this publically due to the fact that I figured I might have gotten fined or shot by some bird watcher. The bike still carries the scars on the paint. The bike in question is a Honda VTX 1800R.

I know this sounds crazy but as God is my wittness it is 100% truth.

It is something we in cryptozoology should consider. Amatuer naturalists (like birdwatchers) are a resource that we should use. But when the spectre of “quick cash” rears its ugly head, strange things happen (and I mean strange things like hoaxes and kooks crawling out of the woodwork, not the kind of “strange things” we are all hoping to prove are out there.)
Money does weird things to people.