I Run Over A Deer

Once, along the two-lane road, I and the drivers behind me were stopped and blocked by a police car. Some vehicle had hit a fawn, injured but still standing. A policeman took his handgun and shot it in the head. It collapsed, convulsed, then died, and that was the best choice.

Who'd have picked up that fawn and driven it to the vet? Paid for its treatment and rehabilitation? What for? If permanently crippled, returned to the wild it'd be hit again, or coyote meat. Not even the oh-poor-Bambi folks would give several grand a year from their own pockets to keep it in a sanctuary. Unfortunately the increased "development" in this area is herding deer down toward the road. I see about one dead deer per week, and each dead deer might have been a dead person. You have to choose.

Yesterday, after 18 years with about four near-misses, it was my turn with a deer. On the same two-lane road about 6:00 p.m. my car's headlights illuminated a dead doe, a fresh one, lying across my lane with her back toward me, and at 50 mph it was too late for me to swerve. Thump-thump. I heard bones cracking. Sickening. The car seemed fine so I kept going.

Came home later, halted the car to hop out and pick up the mail, and saw that the back license plate looked cracked or "crazed." Poked at it. It was deer hair, sticky. Hair all over the back bumper and a spot of blood. Did not think it wise or see any point in inspecting it further, or taking a photo for you. Next morning, first thing, to the car wash, leaving a nice tip in the tip container for the nice young people about to hose God knows what from beneath the car. Later, concerned about damage, I had the oil changed and hoped they would tell me if they saw bones and meat stuck in the undercarriage.

$10 Ultra Wash

Drive-through car washes are a seasonal treat because in warmer weather I wash my own. This is the car wash I usually patronize in winter, a sort of skin tag attached to the nearest gas station, but it's not the old ordinary steamy and soapy tiled shower anymore; somehow they've invented psychedelic multicolored car soap, and made red tornadoes out of the whirling sponge whips; and just sitting caged while this dance of the seven veils engulfed my car, and me in it, like, blew my mind, man. And the car (she's pearly white; when she was new I called her "The Bride," and now, after six and a half years, she's "My Wife"; I don't go anywhere without her) is spectacularly clean and glossy after this, the $10 Ultra Wash with Bottom Blast, which was much more worth my $10 than the recent remake of Anna Karenina. You know, sometimes the Midwest can be all right.