‘I’m so scared’: Falling fish crushes Sask. woman’s windshield
Of all the things that can break a car windshield in Saskatchewan, a fish falling from the sky is pretty low on the list of possible suspects.
But that’s what happened to Mary Ahlstrom as she drove home Sept. 19 near Turtle Lake, Sask., about 200 kilometers northwest of Saskatoon.
“You could actually see the imprint of the fish scales in the windshield,” said Ahlstrom, who was unharmed.
At first he assumed a rock had hit the car, but when he saw the blood, he said he knew it must be something else. Then when Ahlstrom got home, she and her husband were able to assess the damage and discover what remained of the fish.
The fish had damaged the windshield as well as the side mirrors of the car. Ahlstrom said there was some confusion when he tried to file a wildlife collision claim under his insurance, with an adjuster telling him fish were not wildlife, but it was resolved.
Ahlstrom said fish falls are not common, but he has heard of them before in the Turtle Lake area.
He said birds in the area, particularly ospreys, sometimes pick up fish that are too heavy to carry, causing them to drop the fish.
“You might find a fish in your yard, and a good friend of ours found one in his house a few years ago,” Ahlstrom said.
CBC News asked prairie naturalist and author Trevor Herriot what he thought.
“It might have been an eagle,” he said. “There’s nothing else other than osprey that catches that kind of fish… but most of the ospreys have gone south by now. There may be a few left, but I’d say the chances are it was a bald eagle.”
Herriot stated that the only other possible explanation would be the release of water from the lake, a phenomenon known to Sometimes pick up fishes and throw them far away But he said that this was highly unlikely considering the weather at the time of the incident.
Whatever the reason, Ahlstrom found some humor 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 I got so scared.”
The Morning Edition – Sask4:20Turtle Lake women got the biggest surprise of their lives when a fish broke their windshield
Mary Ahlstrom of Turtle Lake was driving home from a friend’s house when a fish suddenly fell from the sky and broke her windshield. His insurance was hesitant to cover the cost because the fish were not considered wildlife in their policies.
