It is 6:27 in the morning and I just got a call from Bob on his way to work. This is very unusual. He was very upset; I could hear it in his voice.
He said he was traveling through a local wooded area and saw two deer on the side of the road. At the very last possible moment one of them bolted.
He just walked through the door. He is OK, but his spirit is damaged.
I am sad for both of them.
Dimples must be related to a TIMEX. She takes a licken’ and keeps on ticken’.
Over the past five years:
- Rear end collision (not at fault (NAF)
- Rear end collision – second in one week! (NAF)
- Golf ball and Tangerine sized hail damage!!! (Car is named Dimples after that.)
- Hit a telephone pole hydroplaning at Dead Man’s Curve!
- Hit a deer. 😦
Related articles
- How Does Hitting a Deer Impact Your Insurance? (allstate.com)
Life on the Farmlet 
Awful.
He is FREEKING inside. I can see it in his eyes. He is back on his way to work in the truck.
So sorry
Thank you, Julie.
I’m so sorry to hear that. There are several wooded areas I have to drive through and driving through them at night has me worried every time.
Thanks, Anke.
I know what you mean. I always think of it too when we pass through that stretch. Today made it a reality for Bob. 😦
How incredibly sad for Bob. The only good thing is that he wasn’t hurt (physically).
Yes! Thank you, Annie. I think the clincher was when he turned around to come home and saw the deer was still alive. He called the sheriffs department and they came out to put it out of its misery. :((((((((((
Thought it was just WP mucking up the image. Brutal.
Yes.
deer can cause horrible accidents; the impact is so sudden and unexpected. the natchez trace parkway was always a hazard at night for that reason. i’ll bet when the phone rang that you had a premonition that someone was wrong; i’m glad he’s ok.
you are going to be a bundle of nerves for the rest of the day, aren’t you?
z
I just feel really sad. He still had to go to work today. The weird thing is, that we were just discussing this a week or two back because of a dog that ran out onto the highway and was just wandering too and fro.
He had an accident at the curve last summer when he hydroplaned and ran into a telephone pole. He’s had such a good driving record till we moved here. The first year we were here he got rear-ended. Twice. In one week! Our insurance is going to go UP. 😛
that is bizarre to have so many incidents.. maybe they’re all behind him/you now. i totally understand about the concern for higher insurance premiums. how can one be blamed for a deer that bolted at last minute?
z
I know! But, I am afraid he is going to be labelled ‘high risk’ because of the frequency. We will see.
I can see his guardian angels now…
Surely they are spraying each others wings to put out the flames! 😉
i hope so! the thought makes me smile!
Now that you mention it – me too! 🙂
good! hold that smile! what’s happened has happened, and you can’t go back and change that.. and worrying about what might happen is not going to change things.. either rates might go up.. or they won’t… and you deal with it when that happens.. unless there’s something you can do now to help offset it.
but back to that smile.. yes, that’s a great idea to ponder- angels spraying out fires! z
You are a dear friend, Lisa. 🙂
Thank you, Lisa.
I’m so sad to read that, but I have no picture.. I’ll have to come back later.
I did not find really what bolter meant..
Chantal, I’m sorry. Bolted means to suddenly start running. In this case in front of the car.
Oh, and there is a picture there it is just very dark. If you click on it you will see it a bit more clearly. Maybe I should redo the photo.
In French you could use the verb bondir, which is the source of the English verb to bound. Americans of a certain age will remember the television show Superman, where the superhero was said to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
I wish this deer had been able to bound over your car, Lynda. In my Austin neighborhood, which is suburban and not rural, there are lots of deer, and from time to time one of them gets hit by a car. The city has put up yellow signs in various places with the silhouette of a deer, but as you pointed out, a deer can bolt so suddenly that a driver can’t do anything about it.
I’m sorry for the string of recent accidents, which we’ll all hope are at an end now.
Thank you, Steve. Five accidents in as many years is too many!
Your mention of being in a suburban area and dodging deer has reminded me of a city we passed through in northern California once. It was on the coast and was overrun with deer. It was just too odd to see deer in the yards, along the cliffs, and cavorting on the golf course! The locals had a lot to say about it, and none of it too kind.
Strictly bad timing – a full-grown deer would be well able to clear that little Subaru’s roof with little to no effort and you would not believe how wonderfully graceful they are. As to the over population? Well, that’s completely our fault. We’ve removed most of the natural controls for deer populations – unless we eat them, auto collisions will continue to be a (growing) problem.
The way I was raised, wasting food is a mortal sin and, to have animals suffer so is needless cruelty.
Do you know, I asked a neighbor about this and her shocked response was, “NO. It is against the law!”
So why is it against the law I wonder. Two scenarios come to mind: 1) Stupid people using their cars as weapons to hunt for deer, and 2) Stupid people eating road kill and getting horribly ill or dying.
However, I agree, it is a shame to have killed something, through not fault of your own, and then to let it just go to waste.
Hmm, I find that hard to believe as well. Better to enquire at your local “Fish & Game(?)” office to know for sure and, as to the quality of the meat, well it doesn’t really get any more “local/free range” than that, does it?; )
P.S. Up here at least, there seems to be quite a range of prices… “Farmed” venison: “Frenched” rib roast or tenderloin @ $31.25/lb or sausage (20% pork) @ $9.25/lb
http://www.niagaralocalfoodcoop.ca/shop/category_list_full_changed.php
Or, when purchased directly from a producer less than an hour away, costs from 8-18$/lb…
http://www.rodgersvenison.ca/pricing.html
So, “Bob’s” deer might have actually paid for your deductible?
OK, I think I will check on that then. It would have been a real help to us if we could have.
Ye-GADS! That is some expensive meat!
Hi Lynda, I’ve linked you up with “Wood and Field” rather than try and repeat what’s been said here – hope that’s okay?
I don’t understand what you have done, therefore, I can’t say if it is OK, but I think it’s OK. 😉
Oops, sorry, didn’t leave the link for you…
https://woodandfield.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/deer-tracks/
😉
Oh, bad news…
I am of that certain age! 😉
And I even more so. Somehow—and luckily—I haven’t tried jumping over any tall buildings recently. When I was a teenager two friends and I built a clubhouse in my back yard. I can remember jumping off the roof it at least once, but if I tried that now I’d break both legs, and possibly a lot more.
You too? I jumped exactly once. I bit my tongue so bad that I never did it again! We did try hair-raising things as children. Of course, in those days our parents weren’t afraid to let us outside to explore!
Lynda,I am so sorry this happened. I can’t imagine what Bob is feeling today. I just don’t have any words… this has always been a fear of mine, even before we raised Daisy deer. I feel so bad for Bob… I pray his spirit is renewed somehow.
This is why insurance companies push for longer hunting seasons on deer and for a bigger bag limit. They have major expense in deer collisions. The important thing is that Bob wasn’t injured.
Lori, thank you! I think he will be OK, but I can envision him driving like a granny when he goes through the woods from now on.
I had no idea that the insurance companies were lame! 😦
This is awful. It’s horrible when you hit a creature on the road. Poor Bob – I’m so glad he wasn’t physically injured 😦
ME TOO! He is feeling better this evening thank goodness. This has only happened to me once. I was driving through Texas and pulled off the freeway to find someplace to sleep. It was a very tiny town with bad lighting and no hotel, motel, or even a tent on a corner. I stopped at a dimly lit corner and when I pulled forward I felt the car go over something in the road. It had that icky feeling to it, so I turned the car around and put the cars headlights on it…
It was a dog. It was already dead! But still!!! EW!
I had the same experience with a stag which charged my car in the dark in November many years ago. It was unavoidable but very upsetting.
Charged your car? YIKES! That does sound scary, Tom. Thankfully, Bob is feeling much better this evening. 🙂
Oh so sorry to hear that, but glad Bob is ok!
Thank you, Diana!
He is glad too… He’s been hearing horrible horror stories all day at work about how lucky he is that the deer didn’t go through the windshield! 😛
(Like he needed to hear that.)
Was afraid to look earlier; this time it was “Oh, your poor little car!”
Up here in Ontario, if the damage is caused by hitting the deer, they pay; but, if you go in the ditch avoiding a deer, YOU pay! Go figure!
How unfair is that!?! So I guess if you are avoiding the deer then you just say you lost control of the car instead?
):
If I did not know better or maybe I don’t- I would say Bob has been cursed. 🙂
Gee that is more than enough manure for 10 families. Maybe it is bad karma. No -no that can not be, Just a run of bad luck, Is the area telling you something that you shoud go back to ??? Don’t know where you came from.
Was it California? And, yep your insurance is going to get “pricey” probably.
Bob needs a guardian angel now. I pray that nothing else befalls him.
Thankfully, the agent said that it falls under comprehensive coverage… there is a $500. deductible though. 😦
oh my! those stats are amazing! i love how the car got its name!
the other image did a good job of capturing the dawn drama! it’s nice to see it this way as well!
Apparently, you are one of the few who didn’t just see a black box! 😉
ah, perhaps it’s the fine tuning of an artist’s eyes…. z
Even so! 😉
aw that is So HARD on all the parties- hitting any animal is so traumatic. But a deer is so big and deadly. When they released Elk back in the Missouri Ozarks all I could think about was the upcoming collision on one of those narrow roads of Elk X Mini Cooper.
Glad to hear Bob is OK.
Those deer are just so spazzy around cars. We have one 10 mile long flat floodplain along the Missouri River in my area. Dead straight road. (a rarity around here) And obviously there is just very little traffic on it as we are so far out inthe country. Seeing another car is a 50/50 thing.
This time I saw a car in the distance, then looked over at a deer with a huge rack of antlers running towards us across the dead cornfields. I couldnt believe what I was witnessing or involved in. If the other car and I had maintained our speeds all three of us would have collided at the same point of impact. In the middle of nowhere.
Instead I saw the other driver watching the deer too. We slowed from 55 to about 20 and the deer ran between us and across the road to the other fields at full speed. We just looked at each other and shook our heads and kept going.
Good grief! That would be amazing to see, and I am so glad that you had time to react and nobody got hurt!
He is lucky to be uninjured. Those deer collisions can be tough. One of the first things I was taught when I moved to Texas was to look for the second and third deer. If one crosses in front of you, there are others.
Believe it or not, there are places around here where deer are often out and about. It’s not as bad now as it was during the height of the drought – then, they were so desperate for water and food they were showing up in back yards.
It’s not just the insurance companies pushing for higher limits and longer seasons here. We have herds that are increasing exponentially. They need to be culled for the health of the herd – not to mention the health of drivers on back roads!
Again, I’m so glad it worked out for Bob. And I’m glad that the Sheriff’s dept. was available and willing to come out for the sake of the deer. Hitting the deer wouldn’t make your insurance rates go up – it’s covered under comprehensive (at least here in TX). Multiple claims? Maybe. But maybe not! We’ll hope!
That is what was so odd about this morning. He said that they were just standing at the side of the road and then as he was going by the one just lept out in front of him. He said: “You think you have such fast reflexes, but by the time my foot hit the
breakbrake the accident had already happened!”How awful, Lynda.
(for Bob AND the deer – at least the deer can be put out of misery).
I’ll the image will stay in Bob’s mind for several days.
(& sounds like that car doesn’t have much luck in its life).
He just went to bed, and on the way he said: “I hope I don’t have bad dreams tonight.” I told him he’ll be fine. 😉
Weirdly, his car has sustained so much damage and yet they never pronounce it dead. They weren’t so kind with my SantaFe!!! 😦
I’m so glad Bob’s ok.
Thank you, Patti
Yowzers! I think those first two items on the list explain your reaction to my comic yesterday. Timex is due for some better luck!
LOL! Yes, I would say so! 😉
Terribly sorry for both of them. I hope your husband is alright.
Thank you, and yes, he is fine. Although, he is finding it hard to face the woods so early in the morning!
Nice Sunday Lynda!
And to you as well, Chantal!
Oh my. I just read your story.
I hope things are going smoother by now!
Oh yes! Dimples is fixed and back on the road! And of course, Bob wasn’t hurt which is the most important part! Thanks, Mary!