It was Saturday. We'd gone out to my parents' place to meet up for brunch and then go see the model airplane show out their way - very cool actually, done up just like the real thing - I took pics and video, and when I'm done going through them all (in a week or two), I'll be posting them on here in a later entry...
OK so, after the show, we headed back to my parents' place out on Tanner Ridge (by Keating, for the locals that care out there), to pick up the car.. We headed out on the Pat Bay Highway, southbound, with Holly behind the wheel..
After only a short moment on the road, suddenly traffic bunched up, and everyone came to a near halt. Neither of us could make out what had happened maybe 6 cars up, but it seemed like something major..
That's when I saw the looooong smear of what looked like manure going from around the middle line between the lanes, curving off to the shoulder... That's when Holly spotted the deer, just a few feet in front of a large new-looking pickup truck, also off on the shoulder.
She swerved over to the shoulder and parked, maybe 10-15 feet past the deer. Meanwhile, I'm still just picking up on what's happened. As we're getting out of the car - fast - she says "You can call 911 on your cel" (oh really?? Gee, I didn't know.. pfft)
I whip out my cel and waggle it at the driver of the truck, who is still sitting at the wheel, looking basically shocked. The truck isn't even scratched, and I'm getting puzzled. More so, when I look down at the deer in front of me on the ground.
I will refrain from the gory details, but at this time it was still breathing, with difficulty. Its eyes were open and it just looked... confused. The smell was horrific, like a very dirty stable on a very hot day. Then I realized why. Apparently the impact was primarily in the gut region, which was sliced open pretty good. Without getting overly graphic, suffice to say that the poor thing was ... eviscerated.
All this happened in maybe 3 or 4 seconds. By this time, I was flipping open the phone, and Holly was talking to the driver, asking if he was OK. Poor guy said he wasn't the one that hit the deer (YOUNG deer too, maybe a little over a year old, but FAR from full grown). He said he was right behind the guy that did, and he pulled over to make sure everything was OK. Worst part was, he'd just broken up with his girlfriend moments before... so he was kinda useless to the proceedings...
By this time, 911 had finally picked up. I told them what happened, and suggested they send a police car by. As I'm telling her all this, an ambulance pulls up behind the truck. They'd seen the accident and pulled a U-turn to check it out. As the 911 operator was asking me if everyone was OK (and as I replied "everyone but the deer I think" – it was all so surreal...), the driver of the car that DID hit the deer wandered up. That's when we realized his car was parked on the shoulder, maybe 300 feet away. Long way to come to a stop, I think. Perhaps some speeding was involved??
I checked if he was OK too, and he was. I gave my personal info to 911 and they said a police car was on the way...
Meanwhile, Holly was kneeling by the deer's head, giving it a few ginger strokes on the head. And then she came back over to us. I think that's about when it finally died.
After making sure everyone was still going to be OK, we started to walk back to our car. The guy in the truck left, and the paramedics wandered over to the deer, which was with us, on the way back to our car. We all stood over the deer for a few minutes, contemplating it, and discussing around it... The male EMT kept making off-colour jokes about it, and the female EMT kept glancing at us and then glaring at her partner, I think trying to make him shut up. Between the gore, the smell, and the sadness of the event itself... I can't blame her.
What got to me later was that I found myself... well, not joking so much as nodding and finding nothing wrong with HIS jokes... Maybe it was a shock thing or just an adrenaline thing. Or maybe I've worked in a hospital too long. Who knows.
That was about it. Sad thing. I'm not exactly the most outwardly empathetic person in the world, but once in a while something happens that just tugs at the heart strings...
