Our tips line often gets filled with images that make healthy people want to lavishly vomit, but it's usually the result of a garishly customized Bentley/Hyundai sphinx-thing or something like that. This time, though, the disgust was from real, genuine gore. So, yeah, thanks for that, Andrew Scott of Australia. Thanks a lot.
Rather than let this poor kangaroo die for nothing, however, we thought we'd make a timely Halloween story.
(Warning: disgusting mulched animal images below. Eat that last mouthful of shrimp cocktail before viewing.)
The images sent were of what was described as a BMW Z4 that seemed to have an entire kangaroo crammed into the engine bay. Via the grille, at what must have been a high speed. The email stated it happened near Mitchell, Australia, while the car was travelling at about 140 mph. The message also suggested the marsupial was 154 lbs and made a case for having 'roo bars installed, a reasonable take-away from the whole event.
But things don't quite add up. The car's not a Z4, it's looks more like a 3-series from around 2006. The license plate appears to be German, not Australian. A bit of research shows the story and images have been around since about 2007 at least, and the animal in question has been attributed to be a deer, or an elk, or, more plausibly, a fox.
It's always the same four pictures every time, and those pictures have a faint "webpark.in" watermark on them. It's not clear where, exactly, the images first came from, when it happened, or what the hapless mammal was. It's possible it's faked, though the motive there is pretty hard to guess at.
If these are pictures of an actual event, the animal would likely need to be pretty small to fit in through the radiator grille, between the radiator and the underside of the hood, before presumably getting entangled in the belts on the front of the engine and into the fan, which handles the rest of the pureé-ing duties.
I suppose it could have happened, if the various parties were fast and unlucky enough. The facts are so muddied from being churned through the Internet for so long that the truth here is in about as bad a shape as that otter or dog or ocelot or whatever.
So, since it's not going away, I propose an addendum to the story, in honor of Halloween: in the usual iffy grammar of internet legend posts, people should start adding that, before the car could be repaired, it disappeared from the body shop without a trace. It seems that once BMWs of that era get a taste for mammal blood, they become unstoppable, unquenchable killing machines, and now have a passion for hunting down and devouring the ultimate game: man.
BMW is aware of the issue and may be planning a recall, where the ECU will be reprogrammed to lock out higher primates from any bloodlust-mode situation.
But until then, the carnivorous BMW is out there, watching and waiting. Don't walk near roads alone! And if you're out at night, and see a pair of angel-eye headlights and smell the acrid tang of fresh blood and motor oil, get your ass up some stairs as fast as you fucking can.
The Bloodlusting BMW awaits! Happy Halloween!