they were here first

Today's wildlife encounter.

This morning, I dropped my kiddo off at his wilderness homeschool program. Minutes later, while driving down the Daniel Shays Highway, I crossed paths with a deer.

Deer are crepuscular, mainly coming out at dawn and dusk to forage for food, but I frequently see them later in the morning, between 8:30 and 9:30, nibbling on roadside vegetation. 

Their hoof prints grace our unpaved driveway, muddy trails, and snowy areas close to our house.

I've had a decent amount of close encounters with deer running across the road in front of me while I'm driving. It's always in the back of my mind that one could come out of nowhere, like it did today, when our paths intersected in a shocking, yet somehow inevitable moment of impenetrability.

Neither of us were going terribly fast, but neither of us were able to slow down in enough time to avoid the other. It felt like the episode happened in slow motion, a time-out-of-time, and yet, in the blink of an eye.

I had been listening to a chapter of an audiobook that was discussing the imbalances in our ecosystems, when I drove across the path of a running deer.

They were here first.

What it was running from or running towards, I'll never know. 

It came from my left side, bashed into the middle of the hood, crumpling it like paper, and bounced off the passenger's side, leaving some impression of... something... on the passenger door - a swirling, paisley, comet-like pattern punctuated by hairs - hairs, I was told today, that would be scrutinized by the insurance appraiser, as evidence in my favor, in one of those moments where the world feels horribly upside-down.

Through the right side-view mirror, I watched in horror as the deer ricocheted and flipped over on the side of the road, roly-poly, multiple times in rapid succession; an unnatural tangle of legs. Deer are not supposed to roll over like that. It's a disturbing blur in my mind; the indignity of the affront to this beautiful, graceful animal, is what has stuck with me today.

From the side of the road, the deer quickly got up and ran off, up a hill, in the same direction it had originally been heading before our unfortunate convergence.

Both of us were able to walk away from this collision. My car is badly damaged, and I'm a bit achy and sore, but from my epsom-salted bathwater, I'm pretty sure that I fared better than my cervid companion did today.

My heart feels tender and aches for the many ways in which our infrastructure sets us up for these kinds of unwittingly harmful encounters with the more-than-human world.

Originally published Feburary 14, 2023