Wednesday, April 15, 2015

shoot that poison arrow to my she-e-e-ed

Let's do another mystery object, as we haven't done one of those, for, erm, about three and a half years. So, uncle and youngest goldfish, what's this?


This one is actually more in keeping with the original spirit of the Ask The Family mystery object round than the mannequin leg spike thingy, in that generally once you weren't viewing the object from a crazy angle it was plainly obvious what it was. And so it proves here:


Zoom in a bit for something Googleable and you find this:


This in turn yields some links which reveal that this is some proper serious hunting kit, not a child's toy or anything. All of which raises the question: how the hell did one of these 85cm death-dealing devices end up in my garden? Because that's where I found it, up on the decking near the shed. I have no idea, but common sense dictates that it must have come by an aerial route. We do get a demoralising amount of rubbish just blowing in off the street and under the gate, but this is too heavy to have been wind-borne, and it would have taken some serious twister action to launch it up onto the decking. Which raises the further question: so is someone in the neighbourhood just launching these into the air to fall to earth they know not where? If so, is that technically legal in a built-up area?
I should add that the arrow didn't, as far as I can tell, have a deadly pointy tip attached to it; small mercies and all that. Nonetheless if you collected an untipped arrow in the side of the head at launched-from-a-bow speeds I expect it might smart a bit. Those tips are called "points" among the hunting cognoscenti, people who will no doubt be nodding sagely over the product descriptions here, while the rest of us are sniggering childishly over each occurrence of the words "penetration" and "shaft".

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