On Sunday mornings, we take the backup vehicle, an 18-year-old Chevy Trailblazer, to church because we pick up my mother-in-law, and at 83 years old, she gets better into it (her old truck when she was still independently mobile) than into our primary vehicle, an 18-year-old Lexus SUV that just turned 220,000 on the odometer (the Chevy still relatively spry with 100,000 fewer miles on it and still mostly hers as her independently mobile driving took her to New England, Canada/Michigan (almost the same, especially on multi-million dollar houses on islands in northern Lake Huron), the Grand Canyon, and Florida many times when she was taking care of her brother and later his estate. The Trailblazer now serves mostly as the younger boy’s go-to-work and go-to-school (now that he’s in college, but also when he was in high school) vehicle. So: It’s a mess, and the windshield, well…. A gentle lens for an aging actress, let’s say, with what I presume is soda spray on the inside and dust and pollen that can only be poorly cleaned using the windshield washer since the wiper blade is in pretty bad shape.
So we’re going along on the farm road where it dips between hills and trees by the pipeline pumping station, and my beautiful wife says, “Deer.” I start slowing down, and sure enough, a young deer comes running from the left side of the road. I braked, but not to a complete stop, and it thumped against the vehicle. I didn’t go over it, and I didn’t see it in the rearview mirror, hopefully because it ran off feeling abashed. It was only several miles down the road, on the way down to church, that I stopped because I was suddenly afraid that I had been dragging the poor thing. But the car showed no signs of damage.
We did have a bit of a contretemps in the car though. My wife assured me that I did not hit the deer, and my youngest and I were pretty sure we did. She had seen a deer on the right side of the road, which we did not hit, and had not seen the one on the left, which proceeded to hit us (he said defensively, more defensively than he drives, obvs).
BUT: The impact site was between the wheel well and the door, an invisible dent but that had bent that part of the fender/quarter panel juuuust enough so that the door rubbed against it loudly. Of course, taking it to a body shop for repair might have totaled the car as they recommended new fender and door panels and maybe hinges. So I (when I remembered to, when the temperature got closer to 100 degrees outside) went out with a rubber mallet, some plastic body pry bars, a screwdriver, and some pliers and…. Well, I wish I could tell you that I did an exemplary job fixing it right, but I bent it enough to minimize the rubbing so that it’s not really loud when you open the door.
I was in a similar situation just last week: I took a different route home from town than I normally do, a farm road that I only travel down once every couple of years. It’s curvier than ours, and I slowed way down on it, which meant that the frolicking young deer were able to cross safely in front of me then. I also remember that about ten years ago, someone was driving down that road hit a woman on a horse and drove on, thinking that she had hit a deer. I know how it can happen. I imagine myself doing it. But this was a deer, I assure you.
It’s the first collision with a deer that I’ve had even after 17 years in the country, so I guess I should count myself lucky more than a good driver. I might have hit a squirrel many years ago. I did hit a dog once on a pre-dawn commute through a transitioning neighborhood. Same thing; he came running from left to right, and although I braked hard, I went over him and felt him bump something under the car, but not under the wheels. I came to a stop and saw him standing in the road and decided I was not going to chase him to take him to the vets.
So, yeah, I am unschooled on the protocols of what to do when you hit an animal. Stop to make sure it’s dead? Put it out of its misery? Take it to the vet? I guess I should ask my brother; before he retired, he was hitting deer every couple of months on his morning, two-hour-on-country-highways, pre-dawn and post-sunset winter commutes. I am pretty sure that my father hit his share of things–he often had a few beers before driving up north the go hunting and a few beers on the way, but, of course, I cannot ask him, either, as he has been dead for almost thirty years now. Regardless of if I do the right thing or merely do an acceptable thing, I will mull it over for a long time and feel vaguely guilty about it all.
