TheBanyanTree: The Deer

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Nature tied together an incredible string of Indian summer days for us this
year.  Our highs were in the 80s.  The sun provided remarkable lighting for
the trees’ annual show of oranges, yellows, russets, golds, and of course,
the green accents from the pine trees.

We found our shorts and T-shirts from the back of the closet.  My feet have
gone sockless and I wore sandals again. We walked the dogs like we did in
the throes of summer, a slow deliberate pace so they didn’t get too warm.
Instead of moving across a bare hot black top, our feet crunched discarded
dry leaves scattered on the street.

We slept with our windows open.  And as night time moved to dawn, an orange
full moon appeared above the horizon and made its way across the sky.  Our
dreams were so compelling that we didn’t hear the rustle of the leaves as a
small group of deer cut through our backyard using the moon’s light to guide
them.  They stopped and shook out the bird feeders.  Then they moved on.

I didn’t see anything unusual when I peered out between the blinds into the
backyard when I got up at 3 am.  I prepared my things for my work out.  I
ate breakfast, let the dogs out, and quickly brushed my teeth.  I left the
house at 4 am.  Everything was quiet and still.  The moon was straight above
me and I almost didn’t need the yard light to find my way to the garage.

I started the car and pulled out of the driveway.  I turned onto the main
road.  The radio played a classical music piece, something about ballerinas,
I think.

The moon’s light couldn’t break through the dark trees around the road.  The
car’s headlights were my eyes.

Flashes of red glop appeared.  Piles and piles of red, soupy looking stuff
thrown around the road.  And before I could react, I drove over a deer
carcass, all gutted and mangled.  I heard my car’s bottom scrape over it.  I
had enough clearance not to drag the deer or have it do damage to my car,
but the scrape sounded like a groan.

Someone had hit this deer straight on and pulverized it.  The gory image of
this poor deer seeped into my coconsciousness the rest of the day.

I told Ray about the deer when I got home from work.  He said he saw a deer
hit by a car earlier this week and it was pulverized, too.  He pulled his
car to the side of the road and used a pliers to drag it out of the middle,
so drivers wouldn’t continue to ride over its body.

The moon is waning now.  A cold front is ready to sweep summer out of the
area and we’ll be back to wearing sweaters and using the furnace to heat our
homes.

Fall will be fall again.  And the deer will make their way down to the river
for winter where there aren’t any roads.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

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Sir Winston Churchill