I’m going to talk about the deer now. It had decent antlers so perhaps it was a male, but it was small and feminine, and I know that’s only my human perspective. Probably it was a young male which could be why it was small and alone.
The young male deer didn’t dart like a lot of portrayals of this sort of thing. You believe the movies you’d think they’re as blurry as race cars. But this one, he walked along gingerly while me and this other car were barrelling down El Camino. Pretty sure we both exceeded the local limit.
The deer walked and he’s lucky or wise to start walking when he did because I had the time to break hard and safely. It was fast but time stopped, which is a part of the movie experience I can understand. Time just stopped and or slowed enough to make it a moment. I could see I wasn’t going to kill the deer, which by the way was walking west to the mountains.
But there was the other car and I could see that he didn’t see the deer when it was in front of me. I slowed along and checked the sideview, and I don’t think the other car hit the deer either. We were alone for 30 seconds north and south.
I sat at the drive-through afterward thinking that the deer was alive, headed into the suburbs before the mountains hit, and that the stories I tell are about the times I almost, nearly, saw from a distance. But the deer was alive and that mattered more than some stupid story.
