Oh Deer, What Could the Matter Be?

Listen my children and you shall hear of the afternoon ride of Bucky the Deer. Do not turn aside and say, “Grampa is aged,” for I’ve heard that enough from my Progressive agent. Think of this tale and the facts thereof, as a warning to the perils of being in love. . .

The introduction of the Taurus station wagon, touted by the Ford Motor Company as the greatest vehicle since the DeLorean, turned out to be what would be known in the computer software industry as the Beta version. It was full of bugs. Had I known the problems I would encounter, I would have waited for the 2nd or 3rd generation to come out before I bought. This is exactly why I haven’t upgraded to Windows 11 yet. I know it is full of bugs.

The Taurus had a roof rack on which we attached a car top carrier. Our family of five filled it with camping gear and believed in the car enough that we drove to San Diego and back to Washington State. It was an epic journey where the kids whined louder than the transmission. Imagine if you will, Chevy Chase’s first Vacation movie.

Of course, when we weren’t on a long trip, the top carrier was removed and we drove the car naked (Meaning the stripped-down version of the car, and not us on the inside).

It was a cold and rainy afternoon on a Sunday in November of 1987. Cheryl and I went out for a drive by ourselves, leaving the kids at home for reasons of regaining our sanity.

We enjoyed long drives up to the foothills and along the coastline to the farmlands, always with the goal of finding doughnuts or a specialty coffee. That afternoon in November, the ride took us through the hill country of Whatcom County.

On the car radio Whitney Houston was singing, I Want To Dance With Somebody. Cheryl looked like she was about to doze off so to wake her up I began singing along:

Oh, I wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the heat with somebody
Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody
With somebody who loves me

Cheryl opened her eyes wide, staring straight forward.

“Deer!”

“Yes, honey bunch,” I said, turning toward her.

“There is a deer!” And she pointed to the right shoulder where a blacktail doe was running out of the brush and about to cross the road.

With cat-like reflexes I swerved the Taurus into the center of the road just in case it was considering crossing. This doe was running from something, possibly a dog or a cougar, and it was in a panic. It entered the roadway and should have been hit by the front of my car. Instead it leaped and bounded right over the front of the car doing a nice little Tennessee Two Step with her hooves on the hood before bounding off the left shoulder of the road into the woods.

“Deer!” She shouted again.

“What?” I yelled back, now completely frazzled.

And on to the right shoulder bounded the reason the doe was running. It was rutting season and a two-point buck was after his lady.

The problem with this guy was that he was more amorous than athletic. He also was going to attempt the hood jump and if I’d given him two or three chances, I’m sure he would have made it; but the best he could do on his only attempt was a Fosbury Flop, if Fosbury had been a deer.

The buck jumped to clear the car hood but instead hit his front legs flipping him completely over onto his right side which slid him up the windshield and onto the roof. In the process of the slide, he also managed to trap his right front leg under the roof rack, holding him securely for the moment.

In the process of bouncing off the now dented hood and sliding up the windshield, he managed to tear off one wiper blade. The other blade slapped at his head which was still lying on the glass.

“Stop the car! Stop the car!” My hysterical wife screamed.

“Maybe he’s never been on an afternoon ride before,” I said watching the wiper blade slap his head.

“Is he dead? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling the car to a complete stop.

We sat in the car watching the deer’s head. First, an ear twitched.

“I saw a twitch!” Cheryl said, pointing.

The deer then, obviously annoyed at the wiper blade slapping him on the side of the head, hooked an antler under the arm and snapped it off like it was a mere tree twig.

“And now we have no wipers,” I sighed.

A car approached from the opposite direction. The driver slowed, rolled down his window and pointed.

“You have a deer on your car,” he shouted.

I don’t know. How do you respond to that? I raised my hands and shrugged my shoulders. Cheryl waved like, yes, we see that. He drove on.

The deer wasn’t damaged, shaken up a bit but not broken. His next course of action was getting free. From inside the car, the sound was like a military Humvee taking machine gun fire. Three of its hooves were slamming into the rooftop. His head was thrashing back and forth trying to hook the roof rack with an antler to tear it off. In the meantime, he hooked the driver’s side mirror and tore it off.

A whining sound inside the car intensified until it completely drowned out the radio.

“Will you stop that,” Cheryl ordered. “Real men don’t make sounds like that.”

We could see two more cars approaching, one in front and one from the rear.

Finally, in all the fierce thrashing, the buck slid down the windshield freeing his front right leg. With an enormous clatter, he righted himself and climbed upright onto the roof to stare at the driver behind us. The driver coming in the opposite lane slowed, rolled down her window and shouted, “There’s a deer on your roof!”

Again, how do you respond?

The roof of the Taurus responded by caving in under the weight of the 160-pound deer.

After it appeared that he had oriented himself, he jumped again onto the already destroyed hood, kicked the windshield cracking it at eye level, and he bounded off into the woods.

The driver behind me slowly passed giving us the thumbs up like, You guys all right?

Once more, how do you respond?

I opened the car door and retrieved the wiper blades off the road. Pushing the now bent arms back on their posts, they swung back and forth doing very little.

On the radio inside the car, Cher sang If I Could Turn Back Time.

“If only,” I moaned.

The insurance agent totaled the car.

All we needed was an afternoon ride to relax and calm the nerves before starting over again on Monday morning, but a showoff, unthinking, sex-crazed buck ruined it all. Let this be a lesson to all you young men out there.

I will add that a few years ago, a 2000-pound breeding bull who was chasing a cow got into my backyard and broke through my septic tank lid.

That was a real poop show too.

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