So, nice and rainy morning for the commute in. Cars in front of me going slow, so I pass. About another mile down the road, deer decided to cross the road right in front of me.
I saw the first three go across and I slowed down tapping the brakes to warn the drivers behind me. I could see at least one more deer looking to make the trip. So I tried the ancient Jedi mind trick of looking at the deer and thinking very hard, "Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it." Normally that works. Who knew I'd get a Sith deer this morning.
So the deer came out onto the road, I started braking harder and moved into the center (there was no oncoming traffic, and hopefully the cars behind me will spot the deer and realize why I'm slowing down). It looks like I'm going to be okay, the deer is hesitating again in the right lane. I continue to break.
And then the deer makes a run for it.
Squealing tires and car moves farther into left lane starting to go out of control, deer continues to bolt... and Slam! Deer comes up and is thrown into the ditch. I'm at a stop. I have no idea where the cars behind me are.
The deer struggles to it's feet, which it seems a little unsteady on. The cars that were trailing me don't even seem to have slowed down as they pass on the right (I'm fully in the left lane now, that they were so far behind me is a reason why I passed, they were doing 40 in a 55, although they did speed up when I passed, nice people that they are). When I look back for the deer, it's gone. The brush is pretty thick along this stretch. There's nothing crumpled on the car that I can see, no marks, although it's still pretty dark there is one street light ahead of me. I check for the deer again and they are long gone. It's still raining. I don't think getting out and tracking it is going to help, and I don't have anything to put the deer down with even if I could find it and it was in need (and wrestling with a adult deer that can stand and move to try and help isn't in the cards this morning).
Accelerating I don't hear anything dragging and I drive to the closest parking lot I can pull into and has some light. I can't see any damage, no scrapes, nothing. Considering it's a 5mph bumper, I take that as a good sign. When it gets light enough I'll check closer (hopefully it won't be raining). I'm some what confident that I hit it at less than 5mph. Still not good for a deer (the car being the larger mass), especially being thrown like that. But I'm hopeful it only has some bruising and that we'll both go away from this shook up, wiser, and with the attitude of "not going to do that again."
And that made me late to get stuck for the flu shot this morning. Yeah, so I got to finally get to work, only to have a needle stuck in my arm. Turns out the nurse lives along the road I travel to come into work. We talked for a little about some major changes they're going to do to the road. I'm hopeful that's the only synchronicity that's going to be in play this morning.
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