Carnivore Light - I Need a Vacation

We're going camping for a few days starting this coming weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. I know I've been mentioning Canadian Tire an awful lot lately... and now it would seem I'm gonna do it some more. I was looking for power inverters and crank radios and stuff for our trip on the Canadian Tire web site, and stumbled across something unexpected; a carnivore light! Before I could read up on this intriguing item, I saw that it was a flashlight:

I didn't understand. Was the flashlight a carnivore? In that case I really didn't want one. Was the flashlight for carnivores? What kind of carnivores use flashlights?

Owls?

The grandaddy of them all, the mighty T-Rex?

Perhaps Venus Flytrap?

And what carnivore other than Venus Flytrap would have $80 for a flashlight anyway?

Well, I gave my head a shake and stopped thinking such crazy thoughts and read about the flashlight. Turns out it is a "blood tracking" flashlight that can help illuminate blood traces, helping hunters to find game that has been wounded. I went deer hunting once with a friend and his Dad as a teenager, and found that I couldn't pull the trigger. Still, I have no problem with responsible hunters. Some of you may find that kind of gross, but to my mind wounded game is better off found than left to suffer off in the bush somewhere. Still, "carnivore?" Gerber, the maker of the light, also sell an "omnivore" model that doesn't have the blood tracking lights. Going with that logic, I think they should introduce the "herbivore" or "vegan" or maybe the "Veggie Lite", a flashlight for wildlife photographers.

Some of you may be thinking, "what the hell is Rantwick writing about this stupid flashlight for? This has nothing to do with cycling!" There are two points I would like to make in this regard. Firstly, the beauty of writing a blog, whether it appears to have a theme or not, is that I can write about whatever I please. The blog isn't called "cycling stuff", it's called RANTWICK, which means I can be as selfish and random with my subject matter as I wish. I really like that, and my hope is that other people enjoy a change of pace now and then too. Second of all, hunting and cycling sometimes do go together.

image source: pasty.com

And I thought I was a utility cyclist! With carnivores like this around, deer will try anything to get away...

Like I said, I'm going camping and we're leaving Friday morning. That means that there's a ton to do over the next few days that doesn't include blogging. Going by this post, perhaps a little blog break will be a good thing! Anyway, I'm gonna vanish from this space for about a week.

I'll be back next Wednesday to announce the winner of the Captcha contest! Until then, ride your bikes all over the place. Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Note: in case you were considering the carnivore for your blood tracking needs, you should know that it is powered by 4 AA batteries, so it isn't nearly as big as it looks in some of my photoshopped pictures.