When my brother and I were in high school, he drove like a typical teenage boy. More concerned about his friends and what music was playing, than about what was happening on the road. Thank God cell phones weren’t more prevalent back then, because he’d probably be dead by now.
One day, he came home with his side mirror busted off. “I hit a deer,” he told my parents.
“Where did these metal scrapes come from then?” our dad asked him.
“Oh . . .that’s from where the mirror scraped the car,” he blurted out.
Later, we noticed our neighbors’ mailbox in the ditch. I, of course, had to taunt him about this. “What kind of deer was this? Was it a ROBOTIC DEER?” (complete with my awesome Mr. Roboto dance moves.)
It took him 10 years of us taunting him about the robot deer, before he finally admitted what happened. And that’s only because my mom later worked with one of his former classmates, who told her that my brother came to school bragging about how he got away with it.
Apparently, he was changing CDs, lost control of the car on the windy mountain road, and crashed into the mailbox on his 180 degree spin into the ditch.
Hitting a deer was a good excuse though. My mom had done it when we were kids. People hit deer all the time. When I was a kid, the local drive-thru wild animal park would pick up the roadkill deer to feed to the lions and tigers. That was, until they realized that some of the deer were hit because they’d gotten into someone’s marijuana crop and were stoned out of their minds and were blinded by all the pretty headlights . Stoned dead deer = stoned live lions trying to get inside people’s cars because they have the munchies.
When I arrived home on the night before Thanksgiving, my mom and brother were still driving up from California. So I watched The Tonight Show with my dad and he regaled me with all the happenings about town.
“When I got home yesterday, there was a dead deer right up next to the house.”
“What? Why was it next to the house?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t look old or sick or anything. I think it was being chased and ran into the house and broke its neck.”
“Not to assume or anything.”
“It was a momma or a yearling. It wasn’t old. I drug it off down the mountain, so your brother’s dog won’t try to eat it.”
The next morning, so I took the dog outside to pee.
I could see the fucking dead deer from the front yard. The dog could smell it. She was going nuts trying to get down to it.
I stormed inside to my dad and brother watching the game.
“Why the hell is the deer just barely down the hill? You said you threw it off the mountain. The dog’s trying to get it.”
“Oh, I thought you might want to take it with you,” my dad said.
“What? Why would I take a dead deer with me?”
“Wrap it up in a tarp and take it out to the wild animal park. Yeaaaaaah, 420-time, lion buddies. Naaaaants ingonyamaaaaaa, bagithi baba . . .” my brother started singing.
“Why would I be the one to do that? Why wouldn’t we take dad’s truck?”
My mom walked into the room. “You should take it. You don’t have any money for food. Hehehehe.”
“It’s the Cirrrrcle of Liiiife . . .” my brother continued to sing.
“I’m not taking a rotting dead deer for food, you crazies!”
“It’s okay. We can just strap it to your roof. No one will break into your car, because you’ll be ‘That Crazy Hillbilly Girl’,” my dad said.
Then my mom added, “Yeah, we can cut his head off and strap it to your grill and paint its nose red. It’ll be Christmassy.”
WTF.
There are lots of dear deer on the side of the road around here. It would be easy to make my car “Christmassy.”