roadkill

This is a buck in Finland.

Supposedly, forest officials coat their antlers with glow-in-the-dark paint so they’re easier to see on a dark road, the goal being to save their lives along with the poor, unsuspecting motorists they have the misfortune to encounter.

As you can imagine, so many thoughts ran through my head when I saw this:

1. Man, being lit up like they’re sporting two freaking light-sabers on their heads— that’s either a boon or a drag on their sex lives. Curious to hear about that.
2. The internet is full of big fat lying liars who lie, so if this isn’t real, bummer. (Finnish readers, let us know).
3. Where was this when we rode our motorcycle through the dark pine forests of the Great Northwest back in 2005 and I found out I could possibly meet my maker as a result of one bad decision made by one of these majestic creatures?

Anyway, here’s how that went. Warning, I did not handle it well.

Excerpt from Overcoming My Fear Of Bambi , Part I

“One day in central Oregon, if I remember correctly, we saw remnants on the road of a deer who’d met the front bumper of a logging truck at 65 mph.

Then another. Then a third. Being someone who likes their animals fully assembled, I was traumatized.

The next day we encountered the remnants of a red pickup truck at a gas station. Barely recognizable, it had been totaled on all four sides by a huge buck who’d gone up and over the front hood and windshield, its legs making contact with the side panels on its way down the back and straight to heaven.

“What happens if we hit a deer?” I asked at lunch while picking all the good bits out of my salad.

My husband looked at me with a mix of curiosity and exasperation, as if I’d just botched the punchline of a joke (which I do, always) before slowly putting down his fork. Shaking his head, he fiddled with his paper napkin (he HATES paper napkins, he’s French) before letting out a long sigh.

“Well…” he hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “If I have the chance I will try to slow down, I won’t jam on the brakes and I won’t swerve to get out of the way because THAT will kill us for sure.”

I stopped chewing.

Now he was gathering a full head of steam, gesturing with both hands, “WHEN we hit it, the deer will die, the guts will splatter all over us, it’ll total the front of the bike, but we should live.”

Shit. I dropped my fork on the floor as he kept talking. No five-second rule. No kidding.

“If it’s an Elk or a Moose, I’ll do all the same things, I’ll slow down and go straight ahead, but that’s a huge animal.” Now he had that same glint in his eye the salty old sea captain in Jaws had right before he got eaten by the shark. “You can kiss your ass goodbye,” he hissed, “Because we’ll all die.” Then he picked up his fork and took a big bite of steak.

“Looks like rain,” somebody next to us said.
Cloudy with a chance of body parts, Is what I heard.

I began to wail, “Wait, what?! You mean…we could DIE!”

He stopped chewing. “Let me get this straight?” He asked, “It never occurred to you that you could die on a motorcycle?” Now he was laughing.

“Well… no.” I wasn’t lying, until that day it had never occurred to me. Embarrassed, I felt the need to clarify, “Certainly not at the hands of a Bambi.”

My fate suddenly uncertain, I stopped a passing waitress and ordered a hot fudge sundae.

He went on to explain that the greatest threat was at dusk and dawn when the wildlife was most active. Apparently, that is when the highest incidents of vehicle-versus-fauna accidents occur.

My husband has this theory about accidents. They are a series of random events that converge at the same time and place. If you remove ONE component, the accident cannot occur. For instance, if you forget something and run back into the house delaying your departure by five minutes, that will either place you on or remove you from the accident timeline.

It had now become my mission to remove us from that timeline. New rule: No riding before nine in the morning and kickstands down by five in the evening, otherwise known as dawn and dusk.

Suddenly my beautiful pine forests were filled with terrifying, four-legged terrorists ready to leap out at any moment and render us dead.

Why I Ride is all about the experience. “It’s about LIVING life.”

Hadn’t I just said that to the person who asked me if I was afraid of riding on the back of a bike?

Now I found myself marinating in fear for tens of hours a day, my eyes darting around wildly, searching for animals lurking in the landscape, ready to leap.

Cute became creepy.

Fuck I hate fear, it changes you. It was changing me…”

You can read the rest at Overcoming My Fear Of Bambi, Part II

Overcoming My Fear Of Bambi , Part II

“A bambiraptor is a savage baby deer.”
~ Alan Davies

I was randomly thinking about deer the other day. Don’t ask me why. I think it was prompted by a deer siting at the top of Beverly Glen a month or so ago but I can’t be sure.

Anyway, as we slowly wove our way up the canyon in a single file line (otherwise known as rush hour), I spied a deer casually teetering (if that’s even possible), on an impossibly vertical slope to my right.

Chewing lazily, she seemed to be sizing things up.

Should she stay and enjoy her snack until those things with wheels and bumpers and angry people inside that could kill her were gone? Or should she take her chances and make a run for it?

I could see her thinking about it and that made me mad.

Deer and cars don’t mix. Cars should be viewed with the same trepidation as any natural predator. Think wolf or coyote or Elmer Fudd. But they aren’t and you can just see it in their dark little Bambi eyes.

They are not the least bit afraid of cars.

They either have such an inflated sense of their own speed and agility that they’re convinced they can dash across a street without being hit OR they are in dire need of a Deer Newsletter that informs them of the dangers that living in the city can present.

Either way, evolution has failed them.

Cars are not a novelty. Cars have been around for tens of deer generations. They should run in the other direction the moment they smell traffic instead of eyeballing the wildflowers that grow on the other side of the street. When they see poor Bob laying there, yet another unfortunate victim of roadkill, they should have a family meeting where they yell and smoke too many Marlboro as they instill fear into the hearts of their baby does and sassy teenage bucks.

Maybe they do and nobody cares.

Every deer thinks that it won’t happen to them. Famous last words, right Bob?

I’m like a deer. We all are. You can tell me stuff is dangerous and I’ll just shrug and figure I’ll take my chances.
Sound familiar?

But maybe the deer have it right? Maybe we should ignore the stupid newsletter with page after page of what will kill us. Maybe we should just live our lives with curiosity about those flowers that grow on the other side of the street.

I don’t know. I can’t be sure any of it makes sense.

All I know is that some things aren’t worth dying for…and deer need to learn to read traffic better.

Carry on,
xox

I rest my case!

As I wove around the corner, snaking slowly through the canyon on my way to the hike this morning—I spotted it.

Something wounded or dead right smack dab in the middle of the road.

Immediately my heart sank a little and my body tensed as I straightened in my seat and turned down the radio in order to get a better look. That is essential. My eyes see better in complete silence and the days of multi-tasking are over for me. I can barely drive and apply mascara anymore. I used to be a pro. Now I suck.

Besides, the music was too cheery, too hip-hoppy, for such a morbid scene.

From a distance, it appeared to be an animal. With black fur. In a pool of blood. Something larger than a cat and smaller than a dingo. Perhaps it was a skunk or a possum? They never seem to get the memo explaining how streets with cars lead to death.

It was often out of view, hidden by the cars as we wound our way, bumper to bumper, to our respective destinations.

That’s when my mind took over. This was a living creature. Cut down in its prime. Maybe it was a mother scavenging food for her babies in the dry brush of the drought-ravaged hillsides. Singles mothers can never catch a break.

It was someone’s baby. Another animal’s friend. They had frolicked and played and in all of the excitement it had forgotten to look both ways. It was then that it’s luck had run out. Splat!

There it is. I can see it again. Is it moving? Oh, dear lord, no!
Why aren’t people stopping?! Someone needs to take it for help, or drag it to the side of the road at the very least!

I’ll do it!

I was working myself into one hell of a lather.

When I get close, I’ll stop my car and block traffic in order to access the animal’s well-being. Someone must! I decided.

If you hear of the murder of a woman in yoga pants in the Hollywood Hills by a mob of angry commuters in Friday morning gridlock—it’s me.

When the poor creature came back into view it looked to be lying still. “Oh thank God it’s dead”, I muttered aloud. That is not a sentence that feels good coming out. It is something you never want to hear yourself say. But I meant it. It looked like its suffering was over.

“Why the fuck is everybody running over it?” was the next thing I heard my mouth say. But it was true. No one was swerving to miss it. In their rush to get wherever they were going, they were running directly over the poor thing. I don’t care if it’s a dead possum. Swerve a little!

It was disrespectful, to say the least.

The time had come. Ten minutes had passed and I was almost upon it.

Do I look and ruin my morning?
Or do I look away?
Do steal a quick glance and say a little prayer?
Or do I stare and gross myself out?

I looked. Right at it. And I tried to swerve to miss it but I couldn’t without dying in a head-on collision—so I did my best.

Thump, thump. I cringed.

The right side of my car ran over it at the exact moment that I saw what it was. This roadkill that had sabotaged ten minutes of my morning.

It was a pile of black socks on top of a red sweater.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right.

Carry on,
xox