Watch for spots before your eyes

Yesterday morning, as we neared the pick-up location for our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share, I noticed movement on the right-hand side of the road ahead and slowed down. As we approached, a spotted fawn looked toward us, lifted its head, looked ahead, across the road, and scampered in front of the jeep. We stopped and waited for it to cross the road and enter the woods. It did and we proceeded.

August: spotted fawn time

Photo by J. Harrington

Not two hundred yards beyond the fawn, a buck, its antlers in velvet, bounded across the road and into the woods. We saw no sign of a doe, which is unusual with a fawn out wandering around. Another hundred yards or so and we rolled into the drive of the CSA pick-up barn. No harm, no foul.

We collected our share box, put the contents in the jeep, and started the return trip. At about the same place we saw the fawn enter the woods earlier, we noticed it had returned and was lurking behind a roadside bush. Driving slowly, we eased past the fawn and then picked up some speed, but not too much. A mile or so down the road, as we approached a sweeping left hand turn on the gravel road, I noticed a whitetail doe standing at attention in the ditch on the passenger side of the jeep. I doubly slowed, once for the turn and once for the doe, just in case she did something foolish like dash in front of the jeep just as we were about to pass her. Fortunately, she stayed in the ditch until we got close and then bolted into the woods on her side of the road.

From now until about Thanksgiving you should expect deer to, as Harry Potter fans would say, "apparate" in front of you, often at a distance too short to enable avoiding a serious collision. For the sake of the deer, especially cute, young, fawns, and your sheet metal and air bags and passengers, reducing your travel speed to something well this side of sane would be a good idea. Spots in front of your eyes are much easier to deal with at a reasonable distance.

Here, now, gone

Bob Hicok

We’re standing in the road
looking at a dead fawn. His truck facing town,
mine headed toward home. It appears to be sleeping
on the double yellow, curled as if in tall grass
or on a down comforter in a video someone has posted
on YouTube about her pet deer. No sign of collision
or gunshot, garroting, heart attack: nothing but spots,
cuteness. The name on his door means he works
on the natural gas pipeline that’ll run
from West Virginia to North Carolina.
The company that pays him has a reputation for ruin
worse than syphilis. Employees have been told
to stay away from locals. They stick to a hotel
near the freeway with a decor I’d call modern roach,
drink there, hone boredom, look at stars.
We both crouch to make sure the fawn is dead.
“What the fuck,” he says, staring at the desert
of my face, where there’s no rain or hope,
only cactus, as I search the dry lake-bed of his.
He looks back at the fawn, brings his hands together
as if waiting for a Communion host,
makes a scooping motion with his hands,
then slides his eyes to the side of the road:
I’m being asked to help save a dead fawn
from the bonus carnage of traffic, the shredding
that suggests life isn’t just delicate
but deserves to be erased.
We are the briefest couple
joined by common cause, move the fawn
and stand briefly as men who have respected loss
for sentimental reasons. Then nod, become ghosts
of a moment we are the custodians of, holders
of the unholdable, wind telling the story of itself
to itself.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.