I was driving home from work last night on Interstate 81 (aka The Devil’s Parkway), and some shit went down.
I was in the right lane, doing about 65 mph, and there was another car in the left lane, slightly ahead of me, doing about the same speed. My exit was only about a half-mile away, and I was listening to The Adam Carolla Show through the car speakers. The episode was winding down, and I was amazed how perfectly timed it always seems to be. I can’t tell you how often I’ve pulled into my driveway as the end-of-show music starts playing, even though every episode is a different length and I always listen to as much as possible at work. My life is now calibrated to Carolla-time, it seems.
And there was a sudden disturbance in The Force. I don’t know if I saw it at first, as much as felt it. The car in the left lane made an erratic move, and his entire front end exploded. It dipped way down in the front, and crap was flying everywhere. WTF??
For a second or two I didn’t know what was going on, and went into crisis mode. I took my foot off the gas, which created a slightly increased distance between me and the other car, and my goal was to now maneuver in some way that would limit the amount of trauma that was surely coming.
Then I saw a deer the size of a Shetland pony roll off the passenger side of the other guy’s hood. I had to swerve to miss it, and drove through an airborne debris field. Something heavy and metallic bounced off the roof of my car (a headlight? a dashboard?), and my tires were crunching over glass and metal on the pavement. Then I was clear.
All this happened in an instant, of course, and I was operating on pure, uncut instinct. I looked in my rearview and the dude was in the process of powering down, and so were others behind him. The front end of his car was thoroughly and very much fucked. Smoke was now pouring out. Holy hell!
It was dark, so I pulled into a Sheetz convenience store to take a look at my vehicle underneath the bright lights. The tires seemed to be OK, and so did the roof – even though it sounded like a cannon ball bounced off it. But the front was covered in deer fur. How weird is that? I didn’t hit the thing, but I guess that cloud of stuff I drove through was roughly 50% deer?
About ten minutes later the adrenalin spike wore off, and I had to self-medicate with a three-scoop bowl of Tin Roof Sundae ice cream, with Hershey’s syrup. Like a pudgy spinster executive assistant.
Holy poopballs, Batman! That thing had presumably crossed the southbound lanes of I-81, climbed a steep hill, and was headed across the northbound lanes. NOT a good plan. Isn’t there some kind of deer council, led by the elders, to advise against such actions? It’s a wonder I didn’t roll my ludicrous little wind-up car out there, and/or shit the headliner.
Have you ever hit a deer, or some other kind of animal? I think Steve hits one every six week or so(?!), but so far I’ve been lucky. They’ve darted in front of my car before, giving me a low-grade heart attack, but I’ve never actually made contact with one. Please share your stories, if you have any good ones.
In fact, feel free to tell us any interesting tales of mayhem you’ve witnessed on the road. Use the handy WordPress comments feature provided here completely free of charge.
And I’ll see you guys again soon. Have a safe and disturbance-free weekend and holiday.
I’ll be back on Monday or Tuesday.
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First?
Hahaha.
I live on Staten Island (part of NYC) … we have deer here getting murdered by people driving all the time. 90% of the time I think the drivers are texting (sexting?)…
One of my friends (and grad studies professor) got hit while out jogging… he was wearing bright reflective clothing and she “didn’t see him” and thought she “hit a box”….
I hit a deer in northern Georgia about 25 years ago. I had a good portion of my front end replaced as a result of that collision, as I recall. The deer pretty much ran right into the front of my car, and all I saw was a large brown blur flying over the hood of my Nissan hardbody truck. It took my a second or two to even figure out what had just happened.
My first ever experience with a shart came shortly after I bought my first new (as in 1 2 miles on the odometer new) car in more than a decade. I was in the left lane on the Interstate doing at least 70 while passing a tractor trailer (possibly hauling lawn furniture) when one of its trailer tires blew. I was literally right beside the offending tire and when it blew, it jolted my car and made the loudest bang. I thought the entire right side of my car was a goner. I pulled off the nearest exit and did a close inspection and couldn’t find any damage, except for my underwear.
Well, may not be a deer (though I have hit one before), but this morning a black cat wanted to get the bird ACROSS the road and had a full hard on to get it and nothing was stopping him…so he thought… Now, my reflexes are great, but there was ZERO time to react (at 55 mph) and before I knew it, the poor guy was rolling behind my Honda (2004 minivan with 275,000 miles I am proud to say) with fur-a-flying!
Oh well I thought, he wasn’t moving or flopping around gimpy style from what little time I had to see, and figured it was a “Died on Impact” so didn’t feel too bad! I didn’t see a collar with a name tag of any sorts.
Oh ya, not sure if the cement truck about a half mile behind me double tapped him.
On the way home, I’ll see if he (or her) is still there homeless style in the middle of the road or if the owner claimed him (her)
But the problem I really have is that is was pure black! I’m not superstitious or racially insensitive, but am slightly thinking to not stop tonight for a few adult beverages after work…
My wife and teen son were driving home at dusk one evening on a heavily wooded road that leads to our subdivision. A large buck attempted to beat her Mini convertible and she hit it square across the front of the car and it then crashed through the windshield, half of it ending up across my son’s lap and chest and half it blew through the convertible top and out the back.
Both the son and wife were okay but he was covered in fur, blood and internal organs. The Mini front end was unrecognizable and the inside and back were blood and fur splattered.
I was going to tell my story, but after reading about your wife & son… I won’t. Traumatic!
Going east on the Northern State Parkway on Long Island, I heard a loud bang, and to my left, in the westbound lane, a car was on it’s side, scraping the concrete divider after hitting another car. Looked like Joie Chitwood driving on two wheels.
81 is bad for deer… I drive a truck regularly between Reading and Wilkes-Barre and they seem to be the thickest on the north side of Hazelton but South of 80 in that valley… Of course fog there is regularly that thick that you can barely see the end of the hood as well just to make it even more interesting
I was driving along a service road many moons ago and out of nowhere something large, black and feathery came crashing into my windshield. It was unbelievably loud! I hit the brakes and saw blood and feathers flying everywhere. I convinced myself that it was clearly a bird suicide, and went on about my day. Surprisingly, the windshield of my 1983 Sentra was unscathed.
I was driving home one night back in late November 1999, and a deer ran in front of me. I hit my brakes to avoid a head-on collision, and a second (previously unseen) deer smashed the shit out of my front driver side fender. It slid across my hood and kept on running. I couldn’t open my driver side door more than about 8 inches, and had to get in and out on the passenger side for about a week, until I could get the car into the shop.
When I went to pick the car up, I ran into a girl that I had worked with a year or so prior, and she was very chatty (and I am not), and in an effort to get away from her for a minute, I found myself absentmindedly filling out an entry form for some kind of drawing. I wasn’t even paying attention, and honestly didn’t even remember doing it until I got a call from the shop a couple weeks later (the day before Christmas Eve, in fact) telling me that I had won their drawing for a 1999 Dodge Dakota pickup truck.
I drove truck for a few months, but I’m not really a truck man, so I traded it in for a 1996 Kia Sephia and cash, and drove the hell out of that Kia (putting somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 miles on it) until early 2006, when it would no longer pass Texas state inspection. A few months later, I donated it to Goodwill and moved back to Indiana, because it turns out I had married an asshole.
The worst shit I’ve ever seen on the road was a near miss, for me and everyone else. I watched from the rearview mirror in total horror.
Imagine a 6 lane road, 3 each direction. Parallel to the northbound lanes on the side are several railroad tracks. The speed limit is 55 mph. It’s rush hour; everyone is northbound, myself included.
I am coming up on an intersection; a person may turn right to cross the railroad tracks and continue into a scary place called Newport. However, if a train is crossing the tracks, there is a bar that comes down preventing a person from turning. Therefore, only one or two cars can fit the space between this bar and traffic in the northbound lanes. Not many people head into Newport, so this is not usually a problem.
A person in front of me, however, was attempting to turn right, and there was a train. So the bar was down.
Since the northbound lanes, full of cars, had the green light, I continued past them without incident.
No sooner did I get through the intersection, I see the car waiting to cross the tracks abruptly swerve their car left, ACROSS ALL THREE LANES OF FAST-MOVING TRAFFIC, AND STOP.
They fucking stopped. Like a deer in headlights.
I was certain I was going to witness the deaths of numerous people. I prepared to slow down so I could help those hurt.
There was a flurry of screeching tires, fish tailing, smoke, swerving, horns, utter panic.
But no one hit that car and it’s dumbass occupants.
It was nothing short of a miracle. If I would have been 2 seconds slower, I would have hit that car t-bone style. And no one else was hurt. Amazing.
Also amazing the level of sheer mental retardation of the driver of the Newport-bound car.
A couple we know exited a McDonald’s and pulled onto the Kancamagus highway outside of Lincoln NH. Just as the wife was unwrapping her McChicken sammich, POW…they hit a moose crossing the highway. Since these things are built like large propane tanks on stilts, the moose’s body ended up on top of the front seat pinning the driver and his wife until the state police arrived. They were subsequently de-moosed with some help from a local swamp Yankee. I guess the immobility, bellowing, moose aroma and clods of moose hair had the wife in therapy for a few months. Should’a ordered the McNuggets.
‘swamp Yankee’. That’s awesome – never heard that one…
I’ve hit one once myself. My husband has hit one two different times, and my first ex-husband hit one on two separate occasions. My second ex-husband hit one two different times, two once, and three another time. He wasn’t one for learning from experience. Ha! Ah, Pennsylvania! Gotta love it!
How many deer and husbands were going to Saint Ives?
Deer, wives, husbands, and cars,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
(Always St. AFAIK)
I laughed out loud for the first time today. Thanks John.
I hit two deer within one month when I was in college. I was driving from my parents house through the NJ Pine Barrens to the Brigantine National Wildlife refuge every day for that month (doing biology stuff… I was a Bio major).
Anyway, the first one glanced off the side of the car and ruined the left front fender. Not a big deal, but pretty scary… but the second one happened when my friend was with me. He rode with me to the wildlife refuge so I could do my bio thing there, then we went to Margate and partied at Maloney’s bar for the rest of the day. On the way back through the Pine Barrens a deer jumped in front of the car… I hit it, causing the car to swerve so that all I remember seeing was trees, so I turned the steering wheel hard, and again, all I remember seeing was trees. Finally after a few more swerves the car was stopped, not one tree hit, by some miracle. The hood was bent and front was smashed and radiator leaked a bit, but we managed to get the rest of the way home OK (about another 30 minutes).
I think the alcohol must have helped my reflexes! Oh the good old days when we all didn’t worry about surviving our stupidity!
Another story was a friend of my wife’s family hit a deer, saw that it was wounded and felt terrible. He turned around to see if he could help it and the deer jumped up and WHAM, he hit it again and killed it. Is that the definition of irony?
Hahaha!
“Isn’t there some kind of deer council, led by the elders, to advise against such actions?”
I am saddened that you missed the obvious pun of “eldeers” here. You’re better than that, Jeff.
I travel the Garden State Parkway down towards south Jersey regularly, and there are always dozens of deer just off the roadway (with everyone pushing about 80 mph). These have got to be the Mensa members of the deer world, because I see about one deer carcass every 5 or 6 years, and I’ve never seen one bolt out into the street. If only the human members of the state were as sharp….
I’ve only ever hit a deer once (knock on wood), but at least it was in West Virginia.
Sometime during the 90s, I went with some friends for a weekend ski trip to Canaan Valley. We left after work on a Friday. It’s a five-hour trip, and my buddy volunteered to drive.
At some point we switched drivers, and so I was driving his car on some godforsaken little road in the mountains of WV, late at night in January. We came around a curve and what to our wondering eyes should appear but a line of deer standing single-file across the road. I hit the brakes as hard as I dared; the road was icy, and the car was old enough not to have ABS. I could see we weren’t going to stop in time, so I aimed for a hole between two deer. We heard a *klunk* as we passed through the line.
As we drove on, we were debating: Did we injure the deer? Should we go back? And do what, beat it to death with a ski pole?
We ended up not stopping. We arrived at the place, had a drink and went to bed. In the morning, we checked out the car. One turn signal lens had a crack in it. No other damage.
My brother found himself in a similar situation. All he had to kill the deer was the crappy little car jack.
Back in Arkansas my animal rights friend stopped when she saw a buck struggling on the side of the road She said that within minutes there were 2 guy fighting over who was going to get the head.
I haven’t hit a deer yet thankfully. I did have a wheel off a semi trailer come bouncing at me from the other direction on an interstate in Nevada. I was driving a convertible and had it bounced slightly differently I’d be deader than Bill Cosby’s career.
The year was 1996. I was driving in the middle of the night straight from Denver, Colorado to Toledo, Ohio without stopping for the night, I was on I-80 in Illinois, maybe 50 miles west of Chicago. I had just stopped to get gas and bought a scalding hot 32 ounce coffee. I was cruising along at about 85 mph in my small VW Fox and the biggest deer I’ve ever seen bounded out of a field and ran right in front of me. I managed to veer a bit to the right, so the deer hit a little more in the front on the passenger’s side instead of dead on. Luckily, it didn’t crash through the windshield. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep my car from flipping over, as it was literally skipping off the ground for a while and I could feel the car getting ready to start rolling over multiple times, I had to really fight to keep the steering wheel from spinning in both directions. I don’t how I managed to stop the car from rolling over, which would have left me and my bud deader than Kelsey’s nuts (Thanks, Jeff). We finally came to a stop and some dude in a truck saw it and thought we were goners for sure and said it had to been close to a 300 pound deer. I got out of the car and my knees were shaking from the adrenaline rush. About that coffee, all 32 ounces of screaming hot joe had exploded all over my stomach, cock, balls, and thighs. It hurt to touch any of those areas for days. The cop stopped and told me if I could drive the car home, I could and gave me a piece of paper to show the toll booth people if they asked any questions. Amazingly, the car was able to drive the remaining 200+ miles home, despite the front being smashed in and leaking fluids. We were young and dumb and had about $10 and some spare change to our names, no credit cards, a Glock .40 in a backpack, along with weed and some opium leftover from our trip to Colorado. I just wanted to limp home with out any troubles. I literally made it to my driveway and my car wouldn’t start the next day. To this day, I’m shocked that we made it unscathed, as it felt like the car was careening out of control for certain.
I’ve not hit a deer so far, but a former coworker hit one on the way home one evening on the interstate. It sounds unremarkable until you find out he was going 80 mph on a Harley Davidson without a helmet at the time, and he walked away with minor injuries (he sprained some joint). The bike was totaled but he was completely fine.
I’ve hit 2. On with a pick up, dead center with a push bumper. It didn’t make it. The other when my wife and I were on a motorcycle. That sucked, a lot. The deer got up, ran a bit and laid back down seemingly trying to figure what the he’ll just happened. After a few got up and walked away.
When we hit it the bike went down on the right side and my wife came forward onto me. Full helmet, jacket, gloves, so no huge scars just knocked the wind out of me and about $3800 worth of work to the bike. Dam deer.
I hit a raccoon once. The thing rolled down an embankment and under my back wheel. I thought it was a neighborhood cat. I pulled around to see what I hit and the poor thing is still alive sitting in the middle of the lane with rush hour traffic backing up. I cried the rest of the way home.
I almost hit a deer during a really bad thunderstorm. The deer was confused with all the wind blowing and trees smashing. It ran diagonal down the road and then cut into the reservoir.
I hit a doe in the middle of metropolitan St. Louis – the strangest place to find one! It jumped in front of my car from the grassy median. It was so sudden – all I remember seeing is brown fur flying past my windshield … looked in the rearview to figure out what just happened and saw the poor thing flying through the air. I think it was killed on impact (hopefully) because it just skidded across the road and ended on the side – never moved again till MoDot came and picked up the carcass. Cried the rest of the way home and even more after the body shop estimate of $4800 in damages! Totally traumatic experience for sure … still haunts my dreams!
I’ve never hit any deer, but I’ve finished off plenty of squirrels who figured they had nothing else to live for!
It’s like they were doing a live-action version of “Frogger” or something!
I haven’t hit any deer, but I *did* have one run out of the woods and head butt my driver’s side door while puttering down a side road on a random Sunday afternoon. There was minor damage, and not worth a claim.
A few months later, the car was totaled when a semi driver got lost, turned at the last minute, and slammed (rear tires) into the SAME SPOT as the deer had hit. This accident happened around the corner from the “deer incident”.
A few years later, In yet ANOTHER vehicle, a buzzard attempting to take flight miscalculated, tripped head over heels across my van hood, and slammed into the woods across the road. There was no damage to the vehicle, but I nearly crashed while roaring from laughter. It’s been 6-7 years since this happened, and I laugh every time I pass the “Tripping Buzzard” spot.
What was the deer doing puttering down the side road?
Hit the tail end of a deer on the Ohio turnpike in the ’80s. Enough contact to know I hit it, but no damage to either of us, I think.
A timely post by Jeff – two days ago a coyote jumped in front of my wife’s car in NC. It was fricasseed pronto but again no damage to her or her car.
I’ve not yet hit a deer with my car…bullet yes, car no.
My sister hit one in North Carolina, on her way home one evening. She lives up in the mountains and it darted right out in front of her on some windy country road. She barely side-swiped it, and it still managed to do several thousands worth of damage to her SUV.
My father in law also hit one in a full size truck, had to have a whole new front quarter. It was a nice 8-pt, so he kept the antlers and left the rest for scavengers.
Learning from Chill’s misapprehension, I’m guessing your father-in-law had an even bigger truck. that it was the truck rather than your father-in-law that needed the body work, and that the conventions for removing and displaying antlers are different where you live than here in the Great Northwest Woods. We speak a syntactically complicated language.
jtb
Back in the late 90’s I borrowed my Dad’s Astro minivan when we were moving across the state (Texas.) I hit a medium sized black bird- a crow or raven most likely; it was (fortunately) too small to be a buzzard- going about 70 mph.
It hit the top driver’s side corner of the windshield, shattered it, and dented the metal. It was so loud my ears were ringing for a few days afterward.
In the 90s I went on vacation in the rockies and rented a shitty kia rio that had an extreemly loud ABS system. One night we were driving and there was a Moose standing in the middle of the road, staring at the high beams… not moving. The road was icy so the ABS kicked in, and luckily the loud noise actually scared off the big beast.
This was the first and last time I saw a moose on the road. The odd thing is that for such a big animal, they are hard to see because his fur seemed to absorb light. Anyhow, good thing for the shitty ABS. It’s like a horn and brake, all in one 🙂