Late last night, we received a tip from a very friendly reader named Sara Altschule, informing us that she had been on the local news after a bird—possibly a seagull—flew into her car windshield as she was driving on a highway south of Seattle. It’s a terrifying situation, but Sara’s just thrilled to be alive and have a great story.


She recounts:

This past weekend I was driving from Seattle to Portland to meet my friends for a nice getaway weekend. I was on the freeway in the fast lane when all of a sudden I saw something black in the sky coming at me. As soon as I noticed it, it hit my front windshield, leaving me completely shocked. With my windshield shattered and thousands of pieces of glass all over me, I pulled into the emergency lane. How I did this without getting into a horrible car accident, I don’t even know. When I got over, I realized I had bloody feathers on me. It was a bird that had crashed into my window. I called 911 and the ambulance and fire department came to help me. I survived with only a couple of minor scratches. The fire fighters said they’ve seen a lot of things, but a bird flying into a car isn’t one of them.


“I had glass in my mouth, and glass all over my hair, and I was pulling little pieces of glass out from my skin,” she told KOMO News. “I didn’t know if some of the blood was mine. I thought I might have been really cut up.”

Photos from the accident show the right side of Sara’s windshield completely shattered with a caved-in hole at approximate face level.

“I don’t know what happened to the bird,” she says in the news report. “I didn’t hear it come off of the car. I didn’t see anything afterwards.”


Based on these photos Sara sent us, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that bird is dead.


“I am living a real life Hitchcock movie,” Sara joked.

Oh, sure. It’s all fun, games and near-death traffic accidents until someone gets their eyes pecked out.


Glad you’re safe, Sara! Sorry about the windshield, bird!

Contact the author at madeleine@jezebel.com .