Today I am curious about deer.
Why do they just stand in a road when a car is barreling toward them at 75 miles an hour? Why don't they move?
Because if they don't move, that car will probably hit them, as mine did.
Poor, sad, car.
Hitting a deer was as surreal and as terrifying as I imagined it would be.
I was zipping down the highway at 10:45 p.m., with my Diet Dr. Pepper to keep me awake, a Recess Peanut Butter cup for something sweet to eat and some Parmesan Cheez-its for something salty. I had just left from visiting my son who needed his Mama and I had about 90 minutes yet before I would be home.
The highway was almost deserted, my tunes were playing loudly, the caffeine was keeping me wide awake, and I was feeling good.
Then an apparition appeared.
Well, I wish it was an apparition. It sure seemed like one at first. The deer almost seem to appear instantaneously in front of me, wrapped in some nighttime mist, unmoving, staring straight at me.
It probably didn't just appear, by the way. It might have been standing there for quite awhile. All I know is that by the time I saw it in my headlights it was too late for me to stop.
I swerved to the left for a millisecond, instinctively trying to avoid it, but I'd heard the saying "Don't Veer for Deer" and I was afraid something horrible would happen if I swerved too far out of the way, so I straightened out and then...
Both the sound and the feel of my car slamming into the deer was worse than I thought it could have been. Almost immediately smoke poured our of my engine and my air bag inflated. I still had control of the car, so I slowed down and pulled off to the side of the highway.
I was in shock, but when you're in shock you don't usually realize you're in shock, you know? My lizard brain told me to get out of the car, but I also knew I shouldn't get out on the side of the car where I might get hit, so I crawled over to the passenger side and ended up in the grass on my knees. Of course the first thing I did was call my husband, Tom.
I didn't think about the fact that my phone was on speaker so when he spoke the sound came out in the car, but I was sitting outside about six feet away so I couldn't hear him. After some confusion on both his and my part I finally figured it out and managed to convey to him the sad story of the deer and my car.
A lot more happened. A friendly young fellow stopped by to see if I was okay and he let me warm up in his van while I waited for the cops. I thought he might be a serial killer but he wasn't. He was just a nice guy.
A cop who looked like Nathan Fillion eventually showed up and he called a tow truck. Meanwhile Tom was making the 1.5 hour trip up from our house to pick me up. By the time I got to the car repair place it was about 1:30 a.m. Tom showed up sometime after that and we got home around 3 a.m. and collapsed into bed.
We never found the deer.
When I think about the poor deer I hit I imagine she looked something like this.
In fact, that's exactly how I remember her looking standing on the highway in the milliseconds before I hit her. I still have hope she managed to shake off getting hit point blank by a car going 75 miles per hour and is frolicking in the woods of mid-Michigan right now, older but wiser, and determined never to go near a highway again.
And oh, by the way, here is the answer to what I'm curious about, from Science ABC:
"A deer’s eyes consist of more rods than cones, which is why it is able to see very clearly, even at night. However, when a car’s headlight beam falls into their eyes, the deer becomes blinded by the bright light. Until its eyes adjust to that heightened level of brightness, a deer will keep standing there, which makes it look like the deer is rooted to the spot."
Now I know. And I will be on the lookout for deer, especially on Michigan highways at night.
