Close Encounters Of the Deer Kind.............

We have had a long, cold, bitter second winter in Maryland. Any sign however fleeting of a thaw is greeted with utter joy. Gone is the charm of a winter wonderland, the thrill of waking up to a white, snow covered terrain. We have had multiple winter storms and the aftermath, while visually charming, is physically just painful. Since we live in the suburbs, our roads are not deemed important enough to have the snow trucks come in and shovel away, or to have plenty of chemical salt spread on the road surface to melt away the white stuff. So as the suspense builds over yet another winter storm and many inches of snow, us suburbanites rush to the grocery stores, empty out the shelves, on to the hardware stores to buy up all the shovels and bags of salt. It was a steep learning curve for me; last winter I often found myself staring a empty shelves. During the hurricane season, flashlights would vanish from the stores, in the winter, shovels would disappear. I am much more savvy now, ahead of the curve not behind it any longer!

During this long Siberian winter, a couple of weekends ago we had an unexpected gift from mother nature; a day when the temperature was in the 60s, which was just divine. In a season where average temperature has ranged between 12 and 39 degrees F, this was truly uplifting. Everyone including myself was outdoors enjoying the day. During my three long walks in the neighborhood I noticed a lot of deer, they were having a good time too. We do have a lot of deer in the Maryland and Virginia area, so much so that most people think of them as a nuisance. In many countries, deer are a special, much loved exhibit in the zoo, but not so here. We have encroached on their forests and they return the favor by eating all our decorative plants and flowers in the front yards and backyards and  spreading deer tick that can infect pets and children alike. They move in packs, sometimes friends out on a walk, or sometimes entire families foraging for food. Like many other American animals such as squirrels and cows, they are bigger versions of their Asian cousins.

Later that evening as I was on my way to pick up my daughter from her dance class, there was a great big deer with antlers, right in front of my car and I hit him plum in the center of his body. It was very sudden, here I was cruising along and then there I was hitting the deer and braking. The deer was flung to the side and died within seconds (fortunately it did not suffer). I pulled the car over and within minutes there was a policeman by my side offering to assist and it was then that I saw the full extent of the damage to the car; the front was battered completely. The headlights were gone and the radiator was leaking. I accidentally killed the deer but he gave me a parting gift by totaling my car. After the initial shock, everything got taken care of and concluded smoothly.
It occurred to me that I have been driving for the past 30 odd years in many different cities in various countries, but fortunately never have I had a single accident.  I never imagined a situation in which my car would be destroyed by a deer and that too in DC!
The only good thing that resulted from this encounter was the following; as I sat in the car shaking, immediately after the incident occurred, wondering what I was supposed to do next, I could think of at least 10 people who I could turn to for help. That was a moment of happy realization that I now belong here and am no longer alone.