It was a dog...built like a small tank, maybe?

So, there's this long stretch on the Florida Turnpike that I adore. Somewhere in West Palm, you pick up a toll ticket, and for the next 3 hours, you can drive 70mph without stopping (unless you stop at service plazas for the bane of all long-distance drivers - potty breaks) until you get to Lantana. I've made the drive in a little over 2 hours, actually, but I think it really depends on traffic, time of day, etc. The Lantana toll plaza is right before the Kissimee exit which takes you right to Disney. All in all, this stretch of road makes up about three quarters of our trip. I love it, because I love long highway drives. They relax me. City driving is stressful as hell for me, but give me a long highway and a few hours with a radio that works and I'm a happy camper.

On the way up to Disney, you finally feel like you've left town when you pick up your ticket in West Palm, and you get excited when you reach the Lantana toll booth. On the way home, you breathe a sigh of relief when you reach the West Palm toll booth, because you know in less than an hour, you'll be home.

Got all that? Cuz you'll need it to fully appreciate this story. Go back and get it set in your head. I'll wait.

Ready? Okay.

So, on the way out of the final parking lot on Friday, I tell Mike (who is driving, because there is a bit of city driving on the way back to the Turnpike and that all-important Lantana toll booth) that I'd like to take a short nap before I take over the driving if that's okay. He, of course, being the awesome husband he is, tells me that he's wide awake and can give me a couple hours. So, we get onto the Turnpike, get the toll ticket, and I settle back in my seat and close my eyes.

Juuusst as I'm drifting off, I hear/feel THUMPTHUMP and the car swerves a little. So, of course, I'm sitting up wide-eyed and slightly panicked.

"What was that?"

"I think I hit a dog. He came out of nowhere."

"Oh my god!"

At this point, my son chimes in from the backseat while Mike and I are trying to figure out where it would be best to pull over and check for damage as it looked like the dog kept going and going back on a busy highway to look for it in the dark isn't a safe option.

"OH NO! OHGOD!"

Me: "Caedyn, calm down. We can't go back to check on the dog, but hopefully if he kept moving, he got off the highway. I had a dog once that survived a car accident and made it home to his people so that he could get medical attention before, so it's possible." (I'm thinking not at 70mph, but I'm not gonna tell him that.)

Caedyn: "We're gonna get arrested, I just know it. The police are gonna come and arrest us!" The kid is near-hysterical.

"Caedyn, no one's going to arrest us for hitting a dog on the highway. This is why it's important for owners to keep their dogs on a leash or inside a fence when they're outside. It's horrible that this can happen, I know, but the police are not going to chase us down for accidentally hitting a dog."

This goes on for the next 5 minutes while we're trying to get to the next service plaza to assess the damage, because it's becoming obvious that there is some. When we finally get to the service station at the plaza, we're smelling fluids and watching the temperature gauge go up. Oh yeah. Something's wrong. Car sounds awful.

This small "dog" must have been armored. Not only did he take out the little guard under the bumper meant to protect the forward engine parts (it's in two pieces now), but he bent in the condenser coils with the impact...directly into my less-than-six-month-old radiator, totalling it. Oh, and put a crimp in a metal line on the radiator.

Mike and the mechanic on duty announced it couldn't have been a dog. No fur, no blood. Must have been something in the road. No one else came in on the southbound side having seen anything.

In the meantime, we called my mom, asked her to drive up to get us, and made plans to return in Mike's van with tools and a new radiator. Caedyn, at this point, declares we're never going home again and falls into total panic mode. Oh yeah, folks. Not my night.

So...get Caedyn one of those little hand-held games from the gift shop before it closes (stroke of genius. I think he totally forgot about panicking and cops arresting us, etc.) to wait out the next 3 hours, curl up in the car, and try to figure out how the best vacation ever just turned into the trip home that wasn't.

In telling this tale to Steve, he relates to us the story of his brother, who was driving in central Florida one night and hit a boar. Not only did the (full-size) boar total his Chevy S10 pick-up, but it made it all the way across the highway before it died after the impact. The likelihood is that we hit a very small one from the description Mike gave him.

So, what I want to know is this...

Which of you let your wild pig roam near the Florida Turnpike Friday night?

And how do you sue a boar for the cost of a new radiator and 2 extra trips up to central Florida?

Either that, or who's up there armoring their chihuahua?