My "Oh Shit!" moment of the day....

[poltr1]

I've always been afraid of running into a deer with my car. They often dart out into roadways before looking both ways, and no one teaches deer to look both ways before crossing. The end result is usually a dead deer, and lots of car damage. And the venison (deer meat) can't be eaten because it's been tainted with adrenaline.

It almost happened to me yesterday afternoon.

It was about noon, and it was sunny out. I was on the on-ramp from route 725 westbound (near the Toys R Us) to I-75 northbound. (The locals know this as exit 44.) Suddenly, from left to right, a doe had crossed in front of me less than a car length away from me. She continued to run towards the fence at the side of the highway, and then along the fence. I don't know what spooked her. I'm just glad I wasn't going very fast at the time. I was able to slow down enough and give her a chance to cross.

I'm thankful to be OK. And I guess the deer is too.

Comments

[billroper]

That's bad for the nerves! I'm glad you were paying attention and able to miss her.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I had one of those earlier this week. At night, on the interstate (where there's always too much traffic to use the high beams), I realized that I had a deer in the left lane and a deer on the right shoulder without enough time to do more than hope fervently that neither one would pick right then to hop into the right line. Fortunately, they didn't.

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Actually, the adrenaline doesn't taint the venison: one winter in college, the deer that our friend hit with the Domino's delivery car, and we dressed out in the basement of the co-op that we lived in, was the only meat we could afford. It was a young corn-fed button buck, and was really good. Of course, if the Spousal Unit had not been a former dairy farmer and therefore knew how to correctly dress out the deer, other things like bacteria or blood would have tainted the meat.

But, I warn people who drive me home about the deer-sighting spots on my area roads. And, we once lost a passenger door handle to a deer who swerved to re-intercept us no matter how we swerved to avoid her.