David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Aug. 6, 2002

The fur was flying that night

I felt bad at the time, but now I think it was natural selection at work. The fast and strong deer survive, reproduce and prosper. The slow and weak deer, well, they get run over by dimwitted city boys like me.

We spent the weekend at my in-laws' home in southwestern Virginia, and en route to their abode we drove along the same stretch of road where I killed a deer years ago. Shelia's parents live in a rural community, and I dare say that deer may outnumber townsfolk. (We're talking small town. There's one stoplight, and it blinks yellow after midnight. Get the picture?)

I was going to summer school at Virginia Tech, and Shelia was spending the summer with her parents. It's about a 45-minute drive from my ratty Blacksburg apartment to Shelia's homestead. I drove her home and was about five minutes into the return trip home when I saw the herd of deer. Or maybe it's a pack of deer. A gaggle? A pod? Flock? Whatever. There were about six deer scampering near the dark road, but I saw them for a scant instant.

Just when I thought they had retreated to the safety of the woods they bolted across the narrow country road in front of my Suzuki Sidekick. I didn't hit any of those deer. The deer I clobbered was the straggler. A step behind the rest, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Come to think of it, maybe it was I who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The deer, after all, was a Virginia resident. I was just a visitor from Tennessee.

If you've never run over anything bigger than a squirrel, let me tell you this - it's scary. Hitting a squirrel feels like a minor pot hole. Hitting a deer is different. A deer's body doesn't roll under the car's tires like a squirrel's body does, leaving a greasy spot and a pile of gray fur in the road. A deer takes the hit admirably.

I remembering squealing tires, a bone-jarring THUD and then my headlights illuminating a cloud of fur. The deer was no more.

I sat frozen. I released my death-grip on the steering wheel and eased my foot from the brake pedal. I couldn't see the deer, but I knew it was down there. I sat for a moment, hoping it would leap up from the road and dash off into the woods to rejoin its herd. Or pack. Or school. Whatever. I just wanted it to be alive so I could breathe a sigh of relief and go on my merry way.

I sat for a moment.

I sat for a moment more.

Nothing happened. The flying fur had settled to the road, and there was no sign of movement. I knew I had to get out of the car and survey the situation. You can't just leave an animal that size in the middle of the road.

Would the deer be dead? Would it be writhing in pain, perhaps with broken legs and massive gushing head injury? I didn't really want to look, but that's what you have to do when you're an adult, right? It's like when you drop a hair brush in the toilet. When you're a kid, you can just yell, "Dad! Help! I dropped the brush in the toilet!" Dad will fish it out for you. When you're an adult, however, you're the one who pulls things out of the toilet, and you're the one who checks if the deer is dead.

Thankfully, for me, the deer was dead. It was resting peacefully in the harsh incandescence of my headlights. There was a little trickle of blood from its mouth, but that was the extent of the gore. The THUD had been more than enough.

Then came the big question: What do you do with a deer's body after playing bumper cars with it?

This is where the story gets embarrassing for me. I was maybe 20 years old, and had spent the greater part of my life in suburban Knoxville, where the deer and the antelope rarely, if ever, play. The closest I had ever come to wild animals was at the zoo. I'm no hunter, and I'm no outdoorsman. I've never even fired a gun. I was alone, I was scared, and I was afraid to check the status of my shorts.

So I left the deer in the middle of the road and scurried back to Shelia's home. If I had it to do over again, I would have moved the deer out of the way and called the county road department in the morning. Back then, however, I turned tail and ran, hoping against hope that someone would fish out the brush from the toilet for me.

Shelia's father helped me. I'm sure at the time he was thinking, "What does my daughter see in this dope?", but he gave me a hand anyway. We went back to the scene and dragged the deer to the side of the road.

Every time I drive through that section of road I think about that night. I doubt Darwin had pansy city boys, dawdling deer and low-powered Suzukis in mind when he studied natural selection, but I know I wasn't too thrilled with it that evening. I'm sure the deer didn't think too highly of it, either.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.