Bird Grilled, but Lives to Tell Tale
August 21, 2007 (AP)

BENTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. - A wild bird is little worse for wear after being hit by a car while crossing a road, then spending two days trapped behind the car's grille. Connie Ankli said she unknowingly drove around with the bird, believed to be a quail, inside her vehicle's front end. "Oh, I love grilled poultry. But I usually buy it at the store," she said.

The bird was recovering from its experience at the home of Frank Filmore, a technician at Kepner's Precision Auto Krafters in Berrien County's Benton Township, about 175 miles west of Detroit.

Ankli said she was taking her daughter to her piano lesson Aug. 13 when she saw an animal on a road in Royalton Township. "I didn't want to hit it, so I straddled it," she told The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph. "When I was just about on top of it, it moved. I heard a thump, saw feathers out the back window, but no bird."

Two nights later, she said she noticed movement in the front of the vehicle. "I bent down and looked," she said, and saw a bird "peering out from behind the grille."

Auto shop manager Tim Markham said the bird had broken through the honeycomb-style, plastic grille, which then bent back and trapped the bird. Markham said the bird would be released or turned over to a nature center.