Road Kill

I was coming down off the hill rounding a curve on my way towards town when something dashed in front of the car. It was there before I had time to even hit the brakes. The right front fender hit its hind quarters and it spun around and it went down in the ditch over on the other side of the highway. I quickly stopped the car and got out. My heart was pounding fast as I walked over towards it. It just lay there on its right side with its eyes open looking up at me sympathetically as if saying, I know you didn’t mean to injure me. I looked for trails of blood but didn’t see any. It just lay there with its beautiful brownish tan coat, its lungs expanding and contracting at a rapid rate. I ran up to the nearest house and knocked loudly on the front door but no one answered. I ran back down to the road where the doe was still lying and breathing heavily. Then an old guy in a pickup truck stopped and got out and walked across the road where I was standing. “ Oh you hit a deer did you?” he said. “ Yeah I’m afraid I did. It’s the first time I’ve ever hit a deer,” I replied. “Well, it happens every now and then on this road. Most likely something was probably chasing her,” he said as he moved closer and bent down over the injured animal to check it out closer. He put his hand on its side. “Looks to me like it just got the wind knocked out of its sails. I think she’s just stunned a bit. She’ll probably get up and walk away in awhile. I don’t see any blood. I think she’s going to be okay,” he said, trying to reassure me that it was not seriously injured and I could go on my way. I drove on into Portland after the old fellow convinced me that the deer would be okay. After spending a few hours there, doing some grocery shopping and grabbing a quick lunch I was on my way back home. As I approached the hill and rounded the curve I looked for the deer in the ditch where it had been lying before but I didn’t see any sign of it. I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and got out and walked over to the spot where it had been lying. It was not there. There were no traces of blood anywhere. The old man was right. It was just stunned and in shock and needed some time to gather up its strength and wits before getting up, I thought. I let out a sigh of relief. I got back in the car and drove a few more hundred yards up the road and then I spotted the brownish tan coat in the tall grass in the ditch. I stopped and got out and walked over to it. It had been moving along on its side struggling to get up but couldn’t. Its ribs must have been broken and probably its hind legs. Its frightened eyes were wide open looking up at me. It was suffering tremendously now and was kicking its front legs slowly pushing its way along on its right side there in the tall grass. I knew I had to do something quick. I ran up to the house I had knocked loudly on the front door of before and pounded on it again. An elderly woman finally answered and I told her what had happened. She said she would call the Fish and Game Department because that’s what they did around there when a deer got hit. I waited for five minutes or so while she dialed the number. “ I told them what happened and they said they’d send somebody out right away,” she told me. I went back down the road to where the doe was. It had stopped moving now but was still breathing heavily, gasping for a few last breaths in its agonizing struggle to live. I knelt down beside it and put my right hand on its side feeling the last bit of its life, trying to comfort it, its eyes full of fright still looking up at me. It was beyond the point of struggling anymore and was just hanging on and waiting for the agony to end. It was still warm but was breathing harder. I put my hand on its head trying to help it relax, trying to let it know that I cared for whatever good it would do.
A man and a woman from The Fish and Game Department finally arrived. The woman bent over it in the ditch examining it more closely. “ It’s most likely got some broken ribs and internal bleeding,” she said. “We’ll take care of it from here.” the man told me. He walked back to the truck and came back with a rifle. “ We just shoot them in the brain. It puts them out of their misery real quick. They don’t feel a thing.” he said. They told me I could leave now. As I walked back towards my car I heard the shot ring out and I felt a little better knowing that it was no longer suffering in its painful agony to take another breath. Call it a mercy killing. Like the old man said, something must have spooked her though to run out into the road that fast. I examined the left front fender and grille of my car. There was only a minor dent in the fender and the grille was pushed in a few inches. The damage to my car was hardly even noticeable but another deer was dead and I would be carrying the guilt of killing that innocent helpless animal who was only trying to cross the highway and make it safely to the other side. It was just so sad that it had to suffer so long afterwards before it finally died.