Tuesday, November 23, 2010

dear deer





eventful.

this two-video post has been sitting around in draft form since yesterday morning.  after putting them on here and getting on with my day i proceeded to have a ......very......long......day.  and not in a good way.  i will spare you the details. 

however to give you a feel for the thing i will share with you the very end of it.

i was driving home at midnight which parenthetically is WAY past my bedtime.  i was about 5 minutes from my house on a smallish highway driving about 55 mph.  when i hit a deer. 

i'm tempted to describe the event to you in some detail because it was rather surreal.  not your usual everyday sort of thing.  all slow motion and swerving and trying not to do something like flip the car and end up in a ditch with flashing blue lights.  etc.

the deer was a pretty tawny thing with one of those dark sooty deer noses.  it was cold out but not too and as the deer lay there on the side of the road i could see the heat of it's body steaming up into the night.

at first i thought it was dead.  and i was relieved.  but then it became quite clear it was not. 

it took awhile for the police officer to show up with his shotgun.

so that is that friends.  maybe it has happened to you.  it had never happened to me.  but as i was falling asleep last night on the sofa after watching a part of the late show, which i don't think i have done for some 20-odd years.....i was thinking about the deer.  it was that moment when i first saw it right to the left of my car.  it was running.  and for a moment it just felt like me and the deer were running together.  me in my car and the deer on the pavement in the night.  running together.  it was a nice moment.  the dark, the headlights, the deer's rythmic running.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't know what to say really.. just wish you something good, better than hot chocolate milk and cookies..
just wish you well I think.

Rebekah Leigh said...

Hitting any animal is my idea of a nightmare but hitting a deer must be particularly hard.So difficult.But yes,wishing you good soothing thoughts.I hope the rest of your week is better.

Anonymous said...

Dang liane. That is really tough. I haven't hit a deer, though I have hit a couple other animals and it was some of the saddest experiences of my life. With all the deer around here I think about it every time I drive. They can make moves you would never imagine they would, in front of a moving car.

Have a better day today xo

Chloe said...

So sorry to read about this, pal. Sending you good thoughts.

nicole said...

Yes, this has also happened to me, and it was not a very nice experience. I was sad/scared/relieved at all once (sad to kill such a beautiful thing/scared that I came so close to dying myself/relieved that I was not injured or worse).

Sometimes I think human inventions are the worst things that have ever happened to this world.

Take good care.

m.e.w. said...

Life changes in an instant. And the animal world is mysterious yet ever present, always impacting our lives. Made me think of Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's Hidden Life of Deer.