Ferrries carry all kinds of cars, trucks, people, trailers, kayaks, back packers, salesmen, real estate agents, bicycle riders, property buyers, touriests, and occasionally, some livestock in a truck.


The other night my neighbor, Clyde, and his wife, Fern, stopped by and asked me if I would help them fill out an insurance claim for automobile damage to his 1969 pickup truck that happened on a recent ferry boat ride. He was parked on the lower level and half asleep when a lot of screaming and hollering woke him up. He looked out the windshield just as four ferry-boat-car-parkers came running by in their light-up-in-the-dark orange vests. They sounded like a bunch of cowboys after a Saturday night, line-dancing and drinking party.

They ran by the Clyde's car one way, and then they came running back from the other way, only faster.
Clyde is kind of slow moving because he has only one leg. Sometimes his 40-year-old prosthesis locks up due to the damp air and a touch of rust, so it's hard for him to get out of his truck. So he just rolled down the window and was surprised to note that a very large bull was chasing the car-parkers. He was afraid the guys might run right off the end of the ferry and end up drowning in the frigid waters of the Northwest.

It seems that the bull was attacking the orange vests, just like bulls go after Spanish bullfighters in red capes. A bull can usually stop in about two bull lengths, I'm told, but this one slid five and a-half bull-lengths when he tried to stop on the metal deck of the ferryboat. Once stopped, still standing, the bull quickly spun around and started running back down the aisle between Clyde's truck and the car alongside of it.

Clyde decided he could do something to help out. He had gotten his prosthesis working and he figured that the next time the car-parkers, who were running away from the bull, ran by his car, he would time things just right and open his car door before the bull got by. He figured that if then, someone behind him opened their car door, they would have the bull trapped. Then the car-parkers could tie him up and get him back into the bull owner's truck.

As I said, Clyde is a little slow in his thinking process, so he opened his truck door when that nine-hundred-pound-bull was running wide open between the lines of cars. The bull, with its head down, bent Clyde's pickup truck door, inside out and up against the left front fender.

After the bull hit the door, it staggered around like a punch-drunk fighter. Before the car-parkers could corner him and tie him up, the bull just wandered off the back of the ferry boat and plunged into Rosario Strait. Apparently the ice cold water took away the bull's headache; he started swimming like crazy, but in the wrong direction, i.e. away from the ferry.

The ferry boat captain stopped the boat and put a Coast Guard certified life boat over the side with a crew. The crew was not very good at rounding up a swimming bull, so it took twenty minutes before they got the bull swimming toward an occupied island. There it was finally captured (rounded up) by eleven volunteer fireman, two paramedics, and one sheriff.

Now, what should Clyde say on the form to make an insurance investigator believe the story? And perhaps even more important, where will Clyde find a left-hand door for a 1969 pickup truck, even if the insurance investigator believes his story?


Editor's Note: The story above is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller. Also visit www.tahoetv.com for informative videos on the Tahoe Region.

1008