Collision with Animal
by Pat Darnell
I am a careful driver. However, not always have I been a good driver. I have my moments of lapse, like this morning.
It turns out in our last ten days, several unusual things happened in Middle America. Birds fell from the sky in Arkansas, and fish died along coastlines in that state and others. It rained heavily here in Bryan\College Station TX, after not raining for ten months. Then we had to turn on the furnace for all day and night on several of those days, because it was cold. Water in the buckets outside had ice in them all day and night for two days of freezing. Yep.
The Brazos still has no cane, and cattlemen are taking their yearling's to auction. The rocker arms in the fields are rocking, so that means the gas prices are going up. Gas was $2.99.9 at the double cross station, EXXON, on Tuesday.
I have a nagging head cold, because just before this rain and cold snap, I was out washing the cars and got a bona fide heat stroke. I had chosen a sunny day, not knowing it was 88 degrees on December 21st. Of course there was a precipitation shower that day after cars were dry.
Wavering high margins of cold, freezing northers, while the next day is hot, muggy, weather, makes old organs in middle-aged men, as I, rebel. Those carotid arteries start to ache.
I work nights, in home healthcare, and this Friday I drove out at 6:45 AM as usual. Sun was not up yet. Headlights on, I drove in low gear, not over 50 mph, to let my engine and transmission warm up.
You can guess what happened. Just as I was adjusting stuff in my "Dodge NEON" a blur appears at my front bumper. It is the apparition of a deer. I hit the hind quarter with my right fender. DRAT!
If I had been going the speed limit, 70 mph, it would have been a crash. This was a bump. But it burst my headlight, and stunned me. Luckily no air bag deployed.
It was still dark out and I could not see where the deer went. It disappeared as quickly as it had showed up. Is it deer season? Was this fella being chased, and dashed across five lanes of a highway at that precise instant to engage my little car?
"Don't think about the coincidence," says my wife. "It'll drive you nuts."
The damages come to $1100 and it is covered because we carry comprehensive insurance. If I only carried liability, I would be out this whole amount. The car has 104,000 miles odometer. I drive it to and from work, and it still gets 30 miles per gallon. Yes, I am intimidated by all the RAM Dualies that hug my rear bumper.
The deer I hit could have been any where from 500 to 1200 pounds heavy, and could have destroyed my front end. Said others, in effort to console me, good salty friends that they are; "I had a buddy right in front of our shop hit a 1200 pound buck with his truck. Major damage; major!"
"One woman hit a deer that flipped up into her windshield, and the impact blew out the rear window in her Impala," said another pilgrim. "She was freaking out because her car was covered in ticks and lice."
My daughter even pipes in; it turns out, she has a girlfriend who is so into the whole venison thing she will find deer in the road and try to take them out with her daddy's truck, toss the deer in the truck bed, and drive it home for them to process.
I just drove on home with no other surprises, doing my thing in mornings; getting coffee and listening to the radio. Then I casually told wife and children I hit a deer.
That's my story from the Middle: where women are strong, men are good looking, and the children follow their parents' examples.
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