About a deer

I was driving home from church last Sunday with the boys. (not yesterday. That was Mother's Day, and I was pampered like a queen). Anyways, Kelly had decided that she needed to go "on a date" with dad, so she was off with her father, doing some daddy-daughter bonding.

Everyone, say it with me. "Awwwwwww"

So I'm driving home, and we don't take the freeway (which is where we see deer All The Time, although they're usually just on the side of the road gorging themselves on the new grass), and it's uneventful except for the fact that Nate Will. Not. Stop. Talking.

We're on this sleepy little WIDE road heading back to the house. It's marked at 35mph, but lots of time folks just go slower (except for the idiot in the BMW X5 suv that insists on taking it at Indy500 speeds). And sometimes I think we live in the Twilight Zone, because I can drive the whole way home in my neighbourhood and not see a single person outside. But Sunday was different. There were folks out working in their gardens, and at least 3 people walking dogs.

Nate: "...And for my 6th birthday I want to go to Pump It Up, and I'm going to invite ALL my friends from school, and my Sunday School class, and maybe some friends that I can have when I go to Kelly's school next year, and then when I turn seven, I want to have a skating birthday party, and we'll go to the place by the big Target and the Red Robin, and ..."

Seriously, I had one ear on him, one ear on the radio, and I was looking at the people on the street thinking "I really have to do something about my front yard, because we're starting to look like the Trailer Park family on the street" when I noticed that there was actually a DEER chomping down on the garden of one of my neighbours. And there were All These People all around her, too, and she was just STANDING there, chewing on something that was probably WAY expensive, and newly planted, when

SUDDENLY!

That stupid deer BOLTS from my right. Just BOLTS, I tell you!

Not even enough time for Nate to stop in his Birthday Monologue.

I did slam on the brakes, though, and it was ALMOST enough. The deer clipped off of my front bumper right at the driver's corner. So she ALMOST made it past me. But it was enough of a hit to knock her back legs out from under her, and make her cartwheel across the road and end up on her back against the sidewalk, with her legs twirling in the air, like a turtle on her shell. Funny, if it wasn't so traumatic. I should've had the camera.

I was pleased to see her finally right herself, and go sproinging off into the bushes (wild space on that side of the road) but I was still thinking "oh crap! I've got a crumpled car to deal with" as I slowly... SLOWLY... drove the rest of the way home.

But you know what? Homer must be the incredible self-healing machine, because there was Not A Scratch on him. Although as I went over him with a fine toothed comb, I did noticed that there is a TINY scrape on the back corner where I took out a Honda Accord in the gymnastics parking lot last year. But not even a smudge from where I took down Bambi's mother.