An old legend tells that Noah, when he left the ark, planted a vine. When evening came, accursed Satan conscientiously sprinkled the blood of a lion, a monkey, and a pig around it. Thus, anyone who drank a little “blood of the earth” would have the courage of a lion, a little more and they would get up to the tomfoolery of a chimpanzee, and if they thoroughly abused it, they would behave in an undignified way, like the animal mainly known for having a tail shaped like a corkscrew.
So it would seem that it was the leonine attributes as much as the simian cunning that convinced a man to risk his life on a tanker driving full pelt along a Californian highway. Let’s hope that when the trap was opened, often said to be a dangerous operation because of the intense vapours that come out, our foolhardy candidate for a gargantuan swig did not pass out and tumble into thousands of litres of wine… It might be best to find out what the actual aquatic abilities of Sus domesticus are before dreaming up what kind of undignified behaviour might have taken place inside the wine super tanker.