Paws in the Woods

Deer run these woods and that means that they run the dark roads.  I was a waitress once and I ran the dark roads fifty miles twice and sometimes three times in a week for over two years.  I never hit one but once I came very close to my death.  I was getting it done at close to sixty mph and I am woe to admit that it may have been closer to seventy.  Another car was rarely seen but one night I crossed paths with another and a deer at the very same time.  

The deer crossed between our oncoming in a split second.  She was not small and she must have been scared out of her wits.  I have no idea how fast they can run but she had to be at her limit.  The three of us just skirted each other.  It was so quick that I didn’t have time to feel how close I had come to disaster but not so quick that I didn’t think about it.  

That would have been it for the three of us.  Imagine two cars passing each other at those speeds and striking a fully grown deer at the very same time.  I envisioned the carnage for a second and thought better of trying to picture something like that. I wondered if whoever was driving the other car thought much about it.  I wished I could have asked them.  I’m sure they remember it because that kind of blind luck is not something easily forgotten.  Later, I began to try to talk to the ones I would spot on my travels if I could.  I would check that I was alone on the road and only if I saw them in daylight would I stop.  I wanted to make sure that they heard my voice.  “Remember this car and tell your kin about me!” was my shouting plea as they ran away from me.  It was my thinking that maybe they just don’t understand what we are in our metal boxes rolling down the black.  I know it’s childish because after all they are deer and they don’t possess deductive reasoning but it made me feel better.

I wanted to warn them,  Just please stay out of the road when you hear me.  Finally, I shortened my calls.  “Paws in the woods! Off the black!”

We are the intruders and they have to cross us but I felt a need to actually tell them.  I wanted them to know that I feared them too.  They defy us by not just dying out and leaving us to ourselves.  There is still room for them here and so we run along together.  

Sometime after I began my deer calling I spotted a group of the babies playing a game right in the front yard of someones house as I passed. They were chasing each other in circles still dappled with white.  I wondered if the people inside the house saw it.  Grace granted me the sight of that and I don’t suppose I’ll ever see anything like it again.  I slowed to look a little longer but I didn’t dare stop or they’d have scattered.  They gave me that memory to hold inside myself as I passed in my steel the likes of which has taken so many of them down. 

They take their revenge on gardeners of every sort most of whom just shake their heads saying that the deer get my this or got my that.  Some try sulfur and some try their husbands shoes to sour them from their lot.  

A few years after the oncoming near miss, they scared me so that I started beeping.  That was a bad idea and I feared then that the fires of hell were stoked for me over it.  It was a whole group of them coming across with another oncoming car just like before.  They were a mama and her babies.  All of them cleared us save one.  

He hesitated and turned back to the road right into the path of the oncoming car.  It took him and threw him onto my side of the road.  I stopped and got out and it was very bad.  There he was alone, scared, in shock and broken.  No matter what the extent of his injuries I knew that he was as good as dead.  The other driver stopped and the passenger got out to see what had happened to us.  I know the driver must have been relieved because it could have killed us all had it been the mother.   

I don’t carry a weapon and we needed to make this right so I screamed at the stunned stranger, “Do you have a gun!”  He didn’t.  I opened my trunk looking for something, anything, even though I knew that I had nothing of any use.  I was crazed.  We needed a weapon and I cursed myself for not having one.   We had to do something.  I don’t wish to imagine any sight worse than that broken terrified animal and it will never leave me. 

Thankfully, the stranger stayed at my side when I went back to the deer still crying softly in my misery and hysteria.  He warned me to stand back and he said that they can hurt you with their sharp hooves.  He was right because just then the deer struggled to get back up on his broken little legs.  Then I realized that I was probably making things much worse for him and not better.  He had to be terrified of us and that may be why he struggled instead of just accepting it and if that man hadn’t warned me I could have taken one of those hooves right to my throat.  I had to find some way to set him free so I called a friend who I knew could and would take care of it.  I told the stranger that someone was coming to help and that he should go.  

I was there alone in the dark with that broken suffering creature for about ten minutes.  I kept a safe distance but I kept trying to reassure him in some way.  I spoke low as I tried to sooth him and our hysteria abated.  The only thing I had left was grief.   I told him that it was okay and it would be over soon and he didn’t struggle again.  I cried and I told him how very sorry I was.   

As tired as my friend was he came swearing under his breath about how some things are better left alone.  He ordered me away and cut it’s throat and that was the end of it.    

I cannot imagine shooting one of these animals but they say it needs to be done for their protection and ours.  The jury may still out on that in my estimation. I’m told that if they’re not hunted they will overpopulate and many of them will starve.  Too many puts more of us in danger on the dark roads.  More deer running those roads means more of them will suffer a similar fate to what I witnessed that night and only very few if any will be provided the mercy of the knife.     

I love them and I still call to them every chance I get.  I always feel blessed when I spot them and especially blessed if I pass by with no harm to either of us.