House of Eratosthenes

Yesterday morning I was headed out the door around 4 in the morning, making it as far as exit 135 on I-80 near Colfax and Weimar by 5, which is when Starbucks opens. Resuming my progress eastbound with the coffee & croissant now acquired, I noticed the blood on the highway, along with the bits of fur and flesh. The chunks of flesh got bigger and the blood got thicker as I started to think “uh oh, I think this might be really bad” and there it was — a deer’s ass headed right between my front wheels. There wasn’t any time to do anything at all.

Actually, I was working on a project some twenty years ago and one of the guys who joined up with our crew fairly late, sometime in ’94 I think, just a couple years ago I read that he lost his life right around here. Probably within a mile or two of that spot. His exit from this world came about, according to the news report, because he swerved too sharply to avoid hitting something.

So I hoped for the best, as I felt the deer’s ass — just the ass, with a couple hooves sticking out of it — lift the car off the freeway and then, mercifully, the car settled back down again. After an additional 350 miles, no detectable damage to the gas tank or oil pan, so I think we are good. Last night as I finally drifted off to sleep, I was starting to ponder all the different ways that could’ve gone wrong. What if that was the head, with antlers attached, instead of the ass? Uff da. Scary.

And really, really disgusting. That had to be an eighteen-wheeler. Just five minutes earlier, maybe less.

You dodged a bullet, and that’s a Good Thing. A buddy o’ mine wasn’t so lucky and took out a deer on I-5 in the dead o’ night while astride his Beemer RS-750. He lived to tell the tale, but the RS was TOAST.

It’s best to be in a cage when these thangs happen.
- bpenni | 11/14/2012 @ 16:28
Yeah, I’m inclined to think the eighteen-wheeler might have absorbed some damage that would be worth some $$ on or about the radiator grill, or its cover, or the bumper or something. Could be wrong.

Really gross. There were intestines & stuff.
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2012 @ 16:42
Had the opportunity to wipe out a deer at 60 miles and hour with an empty 84-passenger school bus once. The tow driver ralphed in the ditch when he saw the mess all over the grill and windshield.

Bus was down for a week, then back on the road, almost good as new.
- Nate | 11/14/2012 @ 18:42
Oh man, that must have been one hell of a cleanup job. One for the “So you thought YOUR day at work sucked” files.
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2012 @ 18:47
Gruesome. Glad you’re OK, Morg.

For years I’ve joked that lions don’t need to actually hunt deer – they could just tie a flashlight to their forehead and run in a straight line through the woods, and the deer would fling themselves into their path.

My only deer close call came when I was driving down a two-lane county road in the old Blazer. (This was before GM decided to offer itself to Moloch, with our money as the sacrifice.) A deer kamikaze’d my passenger side; astonishingly, an examination revealed nothing more than a small dent behind the wheel. I think the poor thing must have done a header into the wheel itself. Probably knocked the alignment off some, but nothing that wasn’t correctable.
- nightfly | 11/15/2012 @ 09:11
[…] So says the Nightfly, seeking to comfort Morgan after a close call. (And who but Morgan would title a post “The Deer’s Ass,” anyway?) […]
- dustbury.com » Quote of the Cervidae | 11/16/2012 @ 16:25

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The Deer’s AssWednesday, November 14th, 2012

The Deer’s Ass
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012