At the beginning of 2003, I bought a brand new, black
Chevrolet S10 pick-up truck. It was the
ZR2 edition, so it had the jacked up tires to make it more manly. It was a small truck, but it was the perfect
compromise between the height and utility of a truck and the maneuverability and
convenience of a car. It was my first
brand-new car, the first car I had bought for myself, and I loved it
immensely. I named him “Onyx,” because
every car should have a cool name.
A few months after buying the car, I drove up to College
Station, TX and took my then fiancée out for her birthday. I decided to surprise her with a nice dinner
at Red Lobster (the restaurant she was always bugging me to take her) and a
scenic drive out in the country. College
Station was sort of remote, so without too much effort, it was possible to
drive far enough away from the city to get away from the lights and see the
stars. Everything was going according to
plan, and we were on our way out to my favorite little deserted road to look at
millions of stars splayed across the night sky, when I caught movement out of
the corner of my eye. The moment I
realized what it was, I started screaming, because well…there was nothing else
to do. It was moving too fast for me to
react in any other way.
A second later a deer slammed into the side of my
truck. That’s right, in a twist of the
usual story, a deer hit me instead of the other way around. The doe crossed six lanes of traffic, bounced
off my truck, flopped over in the road, and lay stunned. I immediately pulled off to the side of the
road to assess the situation. I was
standing there looking at that poor deer struggle to try to get up, wondering
what I could do to help her, when I heard a deep, thrumming noise approaching
from the left. A moment later a big,
jacked-up truck with four-foot tires broke through the darkness and ran right
over the deer. There was a faint
squishing sound, and then it was all over.
I guess in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise, because she was
probably suffering immeasurably. With no
way to help her anymore, I turned to see the damage on my truck.
My left front fender and wheel well were completely
crushed. So much so that the fender was
actually bent back onto the tire, rubbing and scraping across the tread. The left side of the hood was crumpled. The front bumper, left headlight, and grill
were shattered. In one moment, that deer
had completely immobilized my truck. I
called the emergency number on my driver’s license, and a police car appeared a
few minutes later. The officer took an
accident report, called me a tow truck, and then offered us a ride back to my
fiancée’s apartment.
So, our night ended up with us in the back of a police
car. And I say that if your birthday
does not end with you in the back of a police car, then you’re not doing it
right. But maybe do it for having fun,
instead of being target practice for a suicidal deer.
