Reality Check

Grouchy this morning, a little late and rushing to get The Girl to school.  I was driving along a wooded road near our house with my mind on the day's to-do list when a deer suddenly leaped out of the bushes along the road and directly into the car in front of me.  There was absolutely nothing the driver could have done about it; the deer emerged too suddenly from the thickets.  She hit the deer, a young buck, with a sickening thud, and I watched with horror as it flipped multiple times in mid-air and crashed back down onto the roadway.

Fortunately, I managed to swerve around her car, which had stopped abruptly, and then get back out of the other lane before the oncoming SUV hit me.  It's a two-lane road with no margin for error on either side, so we were lucky to avoid becoming collateral damage.  Scared the living hell out of me, though...the difference between the deer hitting her car and hitting mine would literally have been a second or two at most and I came way too close to hitting her car as it was.  My adrenaline was pumping for a good two hours afterward.  If either of us had been speeding, the situation would have been catastrophic.

There are constant arguments in the editorial page of our local paper between PETA types and hunters, particularly around this time of year.  This is a rural and agricultural community where you will occasionally see tractors, combines and hay wagons tooling down the main road, and the farmers don't take too kindly to having their livelihoods munched by the local herbivores.  If you look at the same paper's crime blotter, most of what you see reported there is small-time thefts, DUIs, and vehicle-deer crashes like the one this morning.  I can't even begin to imagine how many accidents there would be if hunting here was entirely banned, as some people are advocating.  Even the animal advocates agree that the deer population in these parts has gotten out of hand.

At any rate, my outlook for the day changed in that instant of shock, and the grouch has been banished.  Nothing like almost being in a serious accident to remind you of the difference between minor inconveniences and real problems.