deer

This morning on my usual drive, the car in front of me slowed almost to a stop right after having passed through Toftrees, but before passing the mansion. There's forest (or at least part of one) on either side of the road right there, but at first I thought the person was slowing down because of the speed limit. True, that section's a downgrade, and it's easy to speed accidentally, but that kind of slowing was ridiculous, I thought.

Then I saw the deer bounding into the forest in front of the car. Nice catch, I thought, and proceeded forward slowly after it did.

The one place I've hit a deer wasn't too far away, both distance-wise and time-of-the-year-wise. If my next turn had been left toward the airport instead of right toward campus, I would've been headed in the right direction on the same curvy backwoods highway it first happened on.

It was Halloween a few years ago, if I remember correctly. L. was in the car with me, dressed up as a Flemish nobleman. I don't remember if I'd gotten dressed up yet or not. We were on our way to pick up J. from the airport, after some conference of his. I was cruising fast around a corner, and saw it standing stock still in the headlights. I slowed fast, but still bumped it head-on going around 30-35, if I were to guess.

It was a young one, and I'd thankfully bumped it off the road. I stopped, put my flashers on, made sure L. and I were both all right, got out, looked at it--still moving, though barely--looked at my car, couldn't see any dents in the dark, and tried to figure out what to do--all while adrenaline was coursing through my system like mad. In the meantime, an older car cruised to a stop a few yards in front of me. A man got out, and came back to talk to us, to make sure we were all right. Once he ascertained the reason we were stopped, his questions turned toward the "are you going to call anyone?" and "are you going to report this to your insurance?" variety. I couldn't figure out why he was asking these things until he asked if we minded if he took the deer.

The guy wanted the meat. After some bantering, including debate about whether or not it was dead and him providing me with his phone number in case I wanted a cut, he picked up the young deer (I was struck with the fact that there was no blood, just dead deer) and slung it on top of his trunk (as if he'd done this sort of thing before), then drove away slowly. L. and I looked at each other. For me, it took a few beats before I grasped the absurdity of the situation. I still shake my head about it.

So I'm left with a minor divot in my hood that most people don't notice unless they're really looking (which is why I couldn't see it in the dark), and a story, though a relatively short and not especially exciting one, at that.