Week in, week out

William Hartston explains what you get if you cross a manhole with a three-legged deer

What a week it has been: in France a driver killed a cyclist and injured another after she was distracted by distress signals emitted by the Tamagotchi virtual pet on the end of her car key-ring; in Pennsylvania a white-tailed deer has been fitted with an artificial leg; in London, a meteorite was sold at auction for more than twice its estimate; in Budapest, five people were arrested on suspicion of stealing about 100 doors and iron portals; in Thailand, the governor of Bangkok fell down a manhole, and in Bucharest, the Romanian football team have left a training camp where they were preparing for a friendly against Greece because it was too close to a cemetery.

It's all so glaringly obvious what has been going on. We have been blind not even to have suspected it before. Yet now all the evidence is staring us in the face and we can hardly miss it: a worldwide clandestine group of road safety experts is conspiring to revolutionise the transport systems of the civilised world and drive bicycle manufacturers out of business.

The Japanese were in at the start of it. When their Tamagotchi bleeped so plaintively in that car in Marseille, distracting the driver into taking her eye off the road in order to provide it with virtual food, it should all have been so predictable - an accident waiting to happen. While we have been worrying about the dangers of mobile phones in cars, the insidious threat of the Tamagotchi was lurking.

In Bangkok, governor Bichit Rattakul has warned city officials to improve drain safety after he fell into an open manhole on his way to lay a wreath at the monument to a former king. "I was a little bruised," he said. "If I were thinner, I would have fallen deeper into the sewage."

The officials will now surely be panicked into looking for a quick, cheap way to cover the manholes, which is where the Hungarians come in. "Open manholes, squire? We've got just the thing: 100 doors and wrought iron portals, perfect for laying across holes in the road, and guaranteed to prevent any governor, however thin, from falling into the effluent beneath."

But the open manholes are only the start. Why, we must ask ourselves, did an anonymous American bidder pay pounds 25,300 at Christie's for a 5-in meteorite that had been estimated to fetch between pounds 10,000 and pounds 12,000? For the answer, we need only consider what meteorites do when they crash to earth: why, they make craters! A meteorite is nothing less than nature's way of making holes in the road. And the more holes, the greater the potential market for stolen doors.

Just stop to think of the effect of all this. All over the world, we will face a double plague. On the one hand, of holes in the road crudely covered with stolen doors, and on the other, of cyclists who, if they are not mown down by Tamagotchi-loving motorists, will surely come to grief as their machines mount an unexpected door in the middle of the road. Those Romanian footballers were quite right to quit their training ground near the cemetery. Not only will the place soon be overflowing with dead cyclists, but their funerals will be accompanied by the incessant bleating of the Tamagotchis that lured them to their doom. How can a footballer keep his eye on the ball with all that going on?

Yet this is far more than simply a clever marketing device for stolen doors. That is only the start, as the rest of the week's news reveals. The second phase began in Somerset, Pennsylvania, where a white-tailed deer named Roadrunner has had an artificial leg fitted. Associated Press reports: "The clunking of his aluminium prosthesis alerts bystanders to his movements, but Roadrunner doesn't seem to mind." Of course he doesn't mind! He knows he is the first of a new breed of cyberdeer designed to take over the roads of the world. What bleeping Tamagotchi will stand a chance of distracting anyone, when compared with the clunk of a deer's aluminium leg? And what better to surmount those bumps in the road caused by doors laid flat over open manholes and meteorite craters?

If there's one thing better than a deer at overcoming obstacles, it's an elephant. And our final news story of the week provides the last piece of the jigsaw. At the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem the elephants and hippos are unhappy because they are being deprived of their usual 10 loaves of bread every day because of the Passover. Zoo officials say they're concerned that keepers and visitors might come into contact with leavened foods, which are forbidden over the period. Excuses! Isn't it obvious they're slimming down the elephants to maintain jobs for three-legged deer? Five-inch craters would never bother an elephant, so to avoid the potential problem of Jewish mahouts taking the bottom out of the market for cyberdeer, they're slimming down the elephants to make them useless.

With the roads of Europe full of three-legged deer and enfeebled elephants, there will be an even stronger incentive for people to take to the air. Is it any surprise, therefore, to learn (see page 3) that Virgin Atlantic is training people to overcome their fear of flying? Richard Branson has a good deal of explaining to do.