The events described below happened on Saturday, October 26. They were written down by the author the next day.

I hit a deer tonight, a large buck. 

He loomed like a ghost in the lights of a car passing on my left. 

I stood on the brake. 

The ghost buck missed the other car and appeared in my lane.

I struck him with blunt impact. Not a ghost after all.

He leapt, with agility, into the bushes and vanished in the dark. I sat, numb with surprise, in the slow lane on Highway 12.

The airbag did not deploy, nor was I injured. I drove onto the right shoulder, stopped, and triggered my flashing hazard lights.

I considered the deer, amazed he had taken that jolt and danced away. Was it mere adrenalin that propelled him, bounding off like a—well, like a healthy deer? Would he collapse, mortally injured, a hundred yards off the road? 

What about my car? How much damage was done? 

The driver’s-side door was stuck. I could not get out to inspect the front end.

I started to climb over the center hump, then reconsidered. It’s a small car and I’m an old man,  with cobalt-chromium knees and hips.

I called 9-1-1.

#

A host of angels descended. 

Within three minutes, a lone firefighter arrived, approached my passenger side, and asked through the window if I was okay. I said I wanted to find out how badly my car was injured but could not get out to check it. Was it drivable, I wanted to know.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Seventy-nine,” I said.

“Wait a minute.” He went back to his truck.

In a minute he was back. He came around and pulled on the driver’s door. He gave a yank and it popped open with a crunch. I stepped out.

The left side of the front and the front of the left side were all crumpled. We went to the back and looked under the car for leaking gasoline or other fluids. There were none.

Emotion surged up—rage, indignation, fear? I stifled it as best I could. 

“I’ve been driving in Wisconsin, oh . . . more than sixty years,” I said with wavery voice, “and this is the first time I’ve hit a deer.”

“Bound to happen sooner or later,” he said.

A whole crew arrived on a fire engine. They wore helmets and turnout coats. They gathered round and helped us look some more at the front end.

A Dane County Sheriff’s deputy arrived, quizzed me about the event, and asked if I was injured. 

“No, I’m just . . . chagrined.” 

He took down my name, looked at my driver’s license, made a couple of notes. 

“What kind of insurance you got?”

“We just changed it. It’s uh, what—Cincinnati.”

He nodded and made a note. “Cincinnati Insurance. Your car okay to drive?”

“Seems to be. These guys helped me check it out.”

“How far you got to go?”

“I live on the west side of Madison.”

He nodded. “Let’s make sure those headlights still work.”

I got back in, turned on the ignition, and turned on the headlights. They worked. 

A truck of paramedics arrived. The firemen in the turnout coats told them I was okay.

One paramedic, a grizzled man with close-cropped hair, stuck his head in my window. “You want us to check you over?”

“No,” I said, “I’m okay. No physical injuries.”

He nodded, said to the head fireman, “We’re outta here.” 

The deputy asked me to wait. He went to his car to fill out a crash report and get what he called “a crash number.”

By this time I was on the phone with Joelle. I was just explaining the situation to her when the deputy came back to my window. “Gotta go,” I said.

He handed me a piece of cardboard. “This is your crash report number. Your insurance company may want that.” 

I read it back to make sure I understood his digits and letters, scrawled in the dark in a squad car.

Then he left. By this time all the others had gone. 

I called home and told my wife I’d be home in half an hour.

“Drive carefully,” she said.

I always drive carefully. 

#

It troubled me, what that first firefighter had said. “Bound to happen, sooner or later.”

I hear people say that all the time. If you live in Wisconsin, it’s only a matter of time until you hit a deer, they say. I’ve always dismissed that in my mind as a lame excuse offered by sloppy drivers. 

Couldn’t happen to me.

Well, huh.

I still think it should be possible to avoid deer in all circumstances. But guess who failed to meet my standard? I can be a stickler.

I said a prayer for the buck and one for myself.

#

For the record: Damage to the car was about $6,000. The Cincinnati Insurance adjuster approved it for repair in an eyeblink.

The fate of the deer is unknown.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

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