So... About The Deer

We had just finished a nice but all too short visit with Justin and Carrie, having tea and coffee and decadent sweets at a Panera in Waterloo. We hopped back onto Highway 20 by Crossroads Mall in W'loo and headed west. By the time we got to Dike, it was getting dark, misting rain and foggy. We drove on.

By the Aplington/Wellsburg exit, snow had accumulated on the side of the road and the rain had turned to snow. And it was still foggy (I hate fog and snow at the same time!). Time to drop the speed down by about 10 mph. And a couple miles east of Iowa Falls, in the fog and snow, we saw three silhouettes appear from the median. I was driving, and saw them at the same time that TLMK cried "Deer crossing!" It was not to warn me of a bright yellow warning road sign - it was to tell me that there were deer in the road. I pulled my foot off the gas, swerved a bit left to miss the first two, and then heard a very loud thump from the back of Steve. It was very clear that deer and vehicle had met, and not in a good way.

Well, crap.

Pulled over as soon as it was safe to do so. I was worried about the damage Steve might have incurred. Got out a flashlight and inspected the driver's side rear corner. Barely a dent. The paint wasn't even scratched. Had the deer paused for half a second, he/she wouldn't have had this chance encounter at all.

But we met, literally with the deer running into the back corner of Steve. Hence the conclusion that the deer hit us.

So the scenario is this: you're on a dark stretch of road, it's snowing, it's foggy, it's clear that you've had a wildlife encounter of the fourth kind but you walk (or drive) away nearly unscathed. Do I call my insurance agent? No, not enough damage to worry about. Do we go back and try to find the deer? And if we find it alive, injured or dead, what then? Nothing we can do for it in any situation - I'm not going to field dress a deer and lash it to the roof of Steve to deliver fresh venison for our post-holiday meal.

In the end, we just drove away into the darkness, the snow and the fog (sounds like a Hemingway novel).

So that's the story of the deer. It sounds much worse when you first introduce the subject. But all in all, it was a relatively harmless encounter.

Then again, I'm not the animal that had a headache for the rest of the night.