I Almost Hit A Deer

I almost hit a deer the other night. In all the years of many road trips, I have always thanked my lucky stars that I had not been the one to hit the deer lying dead in a bloody heap on the side of the road. The only near miss I’d had was driving home from Madison with my roommate in her yellow VW bug when I was 21. We were on a county road along the Ohio River, it was dark outside and we were rolling along when suddenly a huge buck – I know it was a buck because it had antlers – ran across the road right in front of us.

We had no time to brake, only to scream and look at each other in amazement afterwards. We didn’t hit the buck. It was a miracle.

The other night I was driving home from Elizabethtown, KY, on I65, at about 11:00 o’clock at night, with my two grandsons, who were asleep. I was approaching the exit for Columbus, when just all of a sudden there was a deer in the road right in front of me, a little to the left of the car. Oh my God. It was a very pale brown and looked up at me like, what are you doing here?

I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the right. My car did that zig-zag maneuver where you feel like you’re losing control, and my little Honda quickly righted itself. But my heart was racing and it took me a little longer to recover. There were no other cars around me, and the boys slept innocently on.

They say you’re not supposed to swerve, to just hit whatever animal that might stray in the road. I didn’t do that, and it turned out okay. But you just never know. It was scary.

P.S.: I did not take these pictures.