What Is The Opposite Of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"?

'Cause I just did it.

We live in suburbia, but only just. We are surrounded by beautiful open hillsides even as we live close to the densest urban complexes of the Bay Area. Wildlife of all description ranges through the local fields. Deer, in particular, are sufficiently numerous as to nearly constitute an annoyance, particularly for those who try to cultivate roses in their yards.

As in other parts of the country where deer live and breed in abundance, roadways can turn unexpectedly hazardous in a moment. A few months ago, returning home late after visiting a friend, an odd sense of foreboding washed over me as I zipped down the very familiar (and very dark) canyon road near home. At work, we had recently discussed how deer are both numerous and functionally suicidal when it comes to roadways. Not five seconds after I slowed my pace out of the sudden and unprompted concern that a deer could jump out of the brush into my path, a deer did just that. I had just enough time to slow down to allow the deer to have its "deer" moment of staring stupidly at me bearing down on him before he dashed into the brush on the other side of the road.

I wish my deer encounter stories stopped there. They would have until last night.

After spending an evening out, we were returning home on the freeway, cruising along in moderate traffic at normal freeway speeds. Without any warning, my headlights picked up the prone figure of a deer lying in our lane. The car ahead of me, an SUV with better than average ground clearance, had not swerved or even hit his brakes to give me any warning that something bad might be coming.

I had no room to maneuver out of my lane, and insufficient time to do so even if I had. All I had time to do was adjust my trajectory slightly so that I would not hit the already dead animal with my wheels, and pray that the car was big enough to clear it.

It wasn't.

The sickening thud right under where I was sitting told me all I needed to know about whether we would clear the animal unscathed. In the mirror, I could see that the collision with the deer had ripped a plastic undertray off the bottom of the car. Otherwise, though, the car seemed to be running normally, with no problems with oil or water temperature to indicate broken engine components.

We arrived home without further incident, and I inspected the undercarriage of the car. Other than losing the plastic cover, nothing appeared to be broken. On the car, that is. The deer did not fare as well, judging by the bits of fur stuck to various cross braces. Toward the back, sadly, it looked as though someone had dragged a very wide paintbrush dipped in red enamel lengthwise down the underside of the car.

At that point in my inspection, we realized that the garage smelled horrible, like... a dead animal. I immediately pulled the car back out of the garage, and the smell went away. I found myself praying for a continuation of the heavy rains we have had for the last week so that I could drive the car to work and get a free undercarriage wash along the way. Today dawned sunny and beautiful, of course.

Reflecting upon what happened, I realized there were a few lessons we could draw. It could have been far worse. We could have been the car that killed the deer, which would have inflicted tremendous damage on the car and put us at risk of injury to ourselves. (The deer was in the middle lane of five lanes on a busy freeway, which makes me wonder how it got there in the first place and what kind of chaos it caused.) We were lucky that the deer was not lying at right angles to the lane, which would have caused me or, more likely, someone before me to hit the animal in a way that would have disabled the car and caused a traffic accident. Other than losing a plastic panel, the car was not damaged, and it did not leak any fluids overnight. I kept my cool and did not take drastic evasive actions that were unnecessary and dangerous; I did what could be done reasonably within the second or so I had to react.

What I should have done, on the other hand, was to call the CHP to alert them to the problem and have them send somebody to clear the animal from the road. I engaged in the assumption that I think most of us make in this day of 99% cell phone ownership, that somebody else surely had already reported the problem, or that somebody immediately after me would do so. In the moment, I was more concerned about assessing the status of our car and giving thanks that it was no worse than trying to figure out how to contact the authorities. Later in the evening, I checked traffic condition sources, but there was no mention of the hazard. The positive I took from that was that the hazard did not create a traffic accident.

I don't think I have ever taken the life of an animal with a car, and I hope I never do. Last night's encounter was traumatic enough, not necessarily because of the gruesomeness of the event but because of the realization of how suddenly a seemingly innocuous drive can turn unexpectedly dangerous. I console myself with the knowledge that I did everything I could to minimize harm to my family and others around me; it is knowing how little I could actually do that worries me.