A Country Drive

This was a beautiful morning for a drive, windows down, sunroof open, yeah baby, what I need is a long drive to clear my head.
I love a long drive on windy back roads. Usually, I crank the music really loud, but I'm enjoying the sound of the wind. You couldn't ask for better driving conditions. I have a feeling that by the time I reach the convalescent center where my grandma is residing, I'll be in a good mood. It'll cheer her up.

Then a deer comes out of nowhere.
Cue the split-second time freeze.
It's a small doe and it runs left to right in front of my car.
I hit the brakes and it crosses my vision, I think I'm gonna miss it.
Whew! That was close.
Bam!
Fuck!

But it doesn't feel that bad, I'm not going especially fast and the deer seems to have grazed my car, so I pull into the parking lot of a nearby church to assess the damage. Two cars pull in behind me.
A man and woman get out of one of them, a second woman gets out of the other car.The guy is walking very quickly towards me. He's awfully young to look so worried.

"Are you OK?", he asks.

"Sure, I'm fine."

"You're sure?"

I look at my hands. They are shaking.

"Uh...I need to sit down." But I don't.

"I have never seen a deer split in half before", says one of the women.

I look at my car. The right headlight assembly is gone. Not damaged, just gone. The front end is broken, exposed; the jagged, torn front of the right fender panel has a newly-serrated edge that is apparently capable of bisecting a deer at 45 mph.

Blood, shit, fur and deer viscera cover the entire passenger side. There are chunks of hairy meat embedded in the front grille. I pry as much off as I can and am surprised to find that the hood opens. That's a good sign.
My passenger window was down, yet no deer guts or blood went inside the car. The outside of the rear passenger is a mess. Lucky.

My car is a rolling total.

At least it runs. I spent $500 dollars on that engine less than a week ago, so it damned sure better run. The engine compartment seems unharmed. That's good.

Satisfied that I am OK, the drivers depart, leaving me to stare at my bloody, wrecked car. I'm calm. It was nice that they stopped. People are not so bad. I sit for a while, thinking about that and suddenly I'm on the ground, sobbing. I could have been killed. That thing could have come through the windshield.
I pull myself together, then I get back on the road heading home. There's a carwash not far away, I've gotta get there and wash this gore off before it fuses with my paint.
On the way back, I see the deer. It really was split in half, the front portion is a yard or so into the woods, the rear is in the roadside ditch.
I killed it.
It killed itself.
It could have killed me.
Calm down.

Have you ever been on the highway driving a car that is covered bumper-to-bumper with deer guts? It's not relaxing.
I really did expect to get pulled over, but I didn't. I got to the car wash.
OUT OF ORDER.
No biggie, they have eight other lanes.
OUT OF ORDER.
All of them.

I'm 25 miles from the next carwash. My car is dripping gore and it is already starting to stink in the sun. I go into the fast-food/quick shop and buy some Windex and a roll of paper towels and start wiping the deer smear off of my ruined vehicle. It's not easy and soon I'm using the windshield squeegee on the side of my car. It works pretty well.
Within a half-hour, I've removed the visible blood. During the entire time- in a busy, holiday gas station- only one guy asks me what happened.

"Hit a deer."

"Fuckin' hate that. Hit on last year. Cost me $3000, but my truck looks good now."

It does look good.
Sure wish I had $3000.


By the time my car is semi-clean, the wiper-fluid bucket looks like it's full of fishing chum.
Deer eat plants and so are usually full of chewed-up plant material; if a deer explodes on your car, there is considerable green matter along with the red. Half-chewed plant stalks and shredded animal tissue float in the bucket.

For a moment, I consider carrying the bucket inside and asking the staff: " Hey, I'm sorry, but no one can use this on their windshields. It's mostly deer blood and half-digested dung, not windex. What should I do with it?"

I think that if I do that, I will certainly wind up in some sort of trouble.

I decide to dump it into a storm drain.

I make it home. There's nothing I can do about the car today. It's a holiday. I can't drive anywhere to watch fireworks, I have no headlights, so no night driving.

I don't miss the fireworks, but I do miss having a car. My options are:

1) Borrow from family to repair/replace car.
But it's unlikely to be repairable -(Find a fender for a 1990 Volvo 780? Good luck, they only made 7,000 of them, ever...)-and I don't want to replace it. It's the only good car I have ever owned and the only reason I could afford it was that I bought it with the money that my suicided uncle Steve left to me. Losing that car would be like losing Steve again.

2) Don't drive.

Right.

I go back outside and look at my car. If I could get a lamp assembly and align it properly, it could almost pass our State inspection. Maybe a bodyshop could bend it back- it's about three inches pulled back and away from the body...more than I can do alone.

I think about all the blood that was on the car and what might have happened if the deer had come through my windshield.
Jesus.

I have terrible luck, but at least I'm alive to realize that.