Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Oh Deer!

Last night I was driving home from town. Maybe half a mile from the house, I saw a small deer standing in the opposite lane about 30-40 feet in front of my car. I started to slow down. When I was maybe 6 feet or so away, the deer suddenly walked right in front of my car. I locked down on the steering wheel and mashed the brakes. Suddenly the deer stumbled and fell down on the road, with my bumper hitting the middle of its back as I came to a stop with the front of my car right on top of it pinning it to the ground. Switching on my 4-ways, I sat there for a few seconds thinking "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" and watching a few tufts of hair drifting through my headlight beams. Then I heard it cry out from under my car. Slowly, I backed up about 4 feet. The deer stood back up and ran away into the night. I drove home, and upon checking the front my car found no signs of any damage whatsoever.

So in short, last night I somehow managed to hit a deer without hurting it or damaging my car in any way.

4 comments:

  1. I had a similar experience a few months ago, where I was slowly going around a curve and a deer jumped into the road from nowhere. I slammed on the brakes and just barely tapped the deer as I stopped. My 4-year-old still talks about that all the time.

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  2. They sure are strange, spastic animals. I'm from the desert, and we didn't really have them out there, so the whole animal-suicide-squad thing has been an unwelcome change.

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  3. We of course have them in Nebraska (I think the white-tail deer is the official state animal). I'm originally from the northeast part of the state, where trees are pretty sparse (the Great American Desert according to Lewis & Clark), so we could see them coming and act accordingly. Now I'm in the southeast of the state, and the trees are thick in places, and it's tougher. The one I speak of was in Oklahoma, and the weird thing there is that they let the trees grow right up to the edge of the road, something we wouldn't do in Nebraska (we have genuine ditches). So, you have literally no warning when they jump onto the road in some places.

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  4. The tree cover you mention is a lot like many parts of Ohio. There are open fields in places, too, but so many areas have trees all around (and tons of small hills) that you just can't see anything coming.

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