Deer Year

For my brother Larry Mannion.

Couple weeks back, I was driving down our street on my way home from a late night milk run and as I neared our house seven deer stepped over the mounds of snow at the foot of our front yard and out into the road.

I stopped.

They stopped.

The eight of us waited.

And waited some more.

We waited long enough for me to wonder if we might be waiting there all night.

I thought about giving the horn a quick tap.

I thought about turning off the headlights.

I thought about the fact that there had just been seven deer in my front yard.

That’s a lot of deer for one small yard.

I thought about how I wished I’d come home sooner so I could have seen them there crowding the yard.  Possibly nibbling on the holly bushes outside the bedroom window.

I thought about how often they might visit our yard, how many nights they’d been out there without my knowing it.

I thought about what it would have been like to lift the blinds some night and find a deer or two or three or seven looking in at me.

I don’t know what the deer thought about.

Not much, I’m guessing.

I’ve never had the impression that deer, despite being ruminants, ruminate about much.

Deer are not among nature’s deep thinkers.

I suspect most species of birds are smarter.

Deer evolved to help wolves work up an appetite before dinner.

So a lot of their brains are given over to strategies for giving wolves a run for their money.

Simple strategies.

Like, “Maybe if I go that way very fast…”

There are no wolves around here.

Consequently, the local white tails don’t have much to occupy their minds.

Whatever these deer were thinking, it wasn’t getting out of my way.

At least not in a hurry.

I didn’t check it on the clock on the dashboard.  I’m sure our standoff in the road didn’t last very long.  What seemed like minutes probably wasn’t even one.  But it was one of those moments when time seems to stop.

One of those encounters with eternity poets make a fuss about.

People will say, “It felt like an eternity,” trying to describe an experience that went on and on and on, time dragging, boredom and irritation and frustration growing.

But an eternity isn’t too much time.  It’s no time.  It’s outside the concept of time.  To enter an eternity is to escape time.  It’s to live forever.

If only for the half a minute or so it takes for it to dawn upon deer that you can’t browse on asphalt.

One of the deer turned away from the car and trotted off.  The other six watched that one leaving and then as a group trotted after it.  They headed down the hill at the end of the street towards the woods and fields below.

When I got inside I went to report the encounter to the blonde.

She was asleep.

So were my sons.

I went online and reported it into cyberspace.

I got a message back from my brother Larry.

“Seven deer?” he typed.  “Maybe it was a sign.”

“Yes,” I replied, “A sign the snow in the woods is deep and the deer have to range farther to find food that isn’t buried.”

Last night, around ten, driving home from work I encountered more deer.

Just one this time.

I hit him.

I think it’s more accurate to say he hit me.

I saw him in time.  He was standing in the middle of the road, probably coming slowly to the realization that you can’t browse on asphalt.  I hit the brakes.

I had the car down to less than twenty miles an hour and would have had it stopped with no harm or foul to either deer or car if he hadn’t suddenly decided to call upon the strategies his ancient ancestors had developed to escape from wolves.

“Maybe if I go that way very fast…”

He dashed forward and threw himself at my bumper.

I clipped him in the hip.

He took out my right front headlights and put a dent in the hood.

He left behind a clump of stiff white hair but no blood.

I didn’t get a good look at what happened to him.

My impression is that he rolled up on the hood and off and landed on his feet and ran for it.

I pulled over, got out, and walked back up the road a bit.  There was no sign of him.

I’m thinking he’s all right.  Probably limping about with a sore leg.  Probably with only a vague memory of how he got the sore leg so that tonight he’ll be back out on the road, looking for grass growing up through the asphalt, not looking out for another car.

I returned to my car and drove home.

Slowly.

Thinking.

“Maybe it was a sign,” I said to myself.

“Yes,” I said.  “A sign you were lucky he didn’t make his charge sooner when you were still going forty-five and total himself and the car or roll up the hood at a different angle and come through the windshield.

“It’s a sign you’re not out more than the cost of a new headlamp.

“It’s a sign you could have been dead and you’re not.”

__________________

Just heard from Larry.  He’s thinking last night’s deer was a sign, a sign I could have hit the first seven.  The deer was a gift.  He threw himself at my car so that, his self-sacrifice projecting backwards through time, those seven deer stepped out of the front yard soon enough for me to see them.

“The quantum universe strikes again.”

Comments

[Mannion Groupie]

Hey Lance, you sure seem to go on a lot of late night milk runs. Is milk a euphemism for weed? Or personal time when no one can disturb you? Or the fact you're planning a bank robbery with your crew of tough but funny ex-convicts with hearts of gold?

:)

[Lance Mannion]

MG, you got me. Yes, to all of the above. Except that it's not always weed. Sometimes I need a less mellow sort of high.

[muddy]

I hit a deer in the ass like that once. She was just standing on the shoulder getting ready to cross the road. I was slowing down when at the last moment she turned to run the other way, and swung her ass out into the lane. Lots of white hair in the grille and the headlight out and she disappeared, just like for you.

It's cool you saw 7 at one time. I have never seen more than 5. You were lucky. Also lucky that all 7 didn't decide to attack your car. They are dumb, rabbits with hooves.

I have a friend who says the best way not to hit deer is to have a gun in the car. You never see any deer when you have one, he says.

[nancy]

My college roommate and I were on a road trip years ago when we found ourselves having to travel through a heavily-wooded state park somewhere in Pennsylvania. We were in a VW bug. We had miles to go before we would pull over at a rest stop to sleep. Drove for miles with deer lining the side of the road, eyes glowing in the dark. We slowed the car to a crawl and made it out of the park somehow, but we surely encountered many scores of them along the way. We learned what the expression "deer in the headlights" meant that night.

You'd think we would have noticed that there were no other cars on the road. Young and foolish roadchicks, we were.

[Tom M]

In our family only the men see deer. The women hit them or, like you, are hit by them. My wife hit one coming home from dinner with friends one night. Our dog loved the front of that car for days.
My daughter was on her way to our house one evening and she hit the last one in a group that was on its way across the road from one patch of woods to another. Got it dead in the middle of the grill. $4500.
My sister is the champ, though. She hit 2 in a month and then the third, an incredible strike. When I saw her car I was amazed that the deer hit her car, as she was doing about thirty, just in front of the driver side door. That was a martyr deer because to hit her car in that spot the deer had to be aiming for it. I warned her after the second that the Family would be after her.
She didn't believe me but those ruminants may not look like they're thinking about anything but they are: revenge.
Well, some of them; maybe the Eastern clan.

[actor212]

Similar story to yours, Lance. I was driving in the ass end of the Catskills by the Pepacton reservoir. I wasn't speeding, doing 55 on a curve. Off to the left, at twilight, I noticed a couple of does standing across the road, waiting politely for me to pass.

As I entered the apex of the turn, leaping nearly the entire width of the road comes this idiot buck. I know he's a buck from the tiny rack...and I bet he got much ribbing about that from the does.

WHUMP!

He lowered his head and charged my car. However, not being the brightest of critters (which the fact that he charged a car should have made obvious), he aimed poorly and hit my left rear quarter panel flush on.

I've never seen a punch drunk deer before. He never went down, altho one...do they call them "knees"?...buckled close to the asphalt.

He straightened up, looked at me, and literally shook the cobwebs out of his head, and bounded off.

I cursed him mightily.

[minstrel hussain boy]

an interesting nature fact from the wild hills of my home.

a deer is born with exactly enough brains to perfectly tan its hide.