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.

Bambi's Skull

Empty turtle shells whitened to chalk by the weather, and bones, and sometimes skulls large or small lie on the forest floor or the creek's edge. This poor fawn died I know not how or when, but please have a look at Bambi's teeth: huge, long, serrated and razor-edged for ripping leaves and grass and garden vegetables--and picture double their number, because this photo is only of the upper plate. Angry deer--yes, they get angry and charge--fight, bite, and kick with those rock-hard hooves and antlers, and a big one can knock you down and stomp you to a pulp and we all know what they can do to a car.

Statistically you are much more likely to be killed by a deer than by a shark. Before getting all teary-eyed over gentle big-eyed Bambi, remember that in the movie Bambi fights Ronno for Faline, stomping Ronno without mercy and knocking him off a cliff. The fight is shown mostly in silhouette to avoid showing blood, wounds, and agony. Nature is not quite so discreet.

Fauna

What is it in our spirits that makes us all excited to see a new fawn? The new deer were born in July, two of them, to the deer family that's been on the Divine 100 acres since I moved here 10 years ago, whom I see and meet now and then in the woods, but just the other afternoon I saw the new babies walking down the lane, and then, as I tried to get a better photo, they skip-hopped into the cedar hollow. Here's one of the pair. I love the details: the elegant hooves, the dark sweet nose,white freckles, skinny legs. They're twins, so when they pass it's like seeing double.

How You Get Born

The strange night sound from the meadow kept repeating itself. Sounded like a buck snorting -- but over and over, rhythmically. Never heard the like, and nervously I stepped out on the porch a few times over the evening hours to listen. It didn't go away. And with my wild, city-bred imagination that is full of ax-murderers, etc., I decided not to get a flashlight and venture out to seek the source. Locked the doors and went to bed.

A week passed and toward dusk I saw the local doe and she was nosing along a very small fawn -- "a football with legs," a friend had described it. Just one fawn. (She usually has two.) But just this one. And I added 2 plus 2 and realized what I had heard that evening was the doe in labor. I could have seen a fawn being born under a meadow of summer stars! I missed it because I made myself afraid!