Kiss My Knits!

I am in an unusual situation. My house is right next to a major four lane road in the middle of Charlotte, NC, yet we also have woods out back. They’ve remained there as a buffer zone between us and a sewage plant about 3/4 of a mile away. The woods extend all the way up the road and all the way along the street we live on, and are home to all kinds of wildlife in the heart of the city. Local bicyclists maintain rudimentary walking and biking trails through the woods so that we can enjoy the woods without disturbing them too much.

Yesterday afternoon, my husband took my daughter out to buy a bikini. We’d been telling her she could get one when Spring came, and… well… Spring came. So she and the hubby had just pulled out. I decided to get some errands done. As I walked from my house to my car, I saw three deer bound out of the woods! Very exciting!

Two of them bounded back in to the woods, and one of them bounded across the yard… across three lanes of traffic… but didn’t make it across the fourth. The car that hit it didn’t stop.

I dropped the empty box I was carrying and started shouting hoarsely, “No! No!” As I watched, the deer tried to get up without success. It was still alive. I thought of all the possible sources of help. 911 was NOT going to send an ambulance for a deer. Does animal control help with this kind of thing? What will the police say? As I ran through all the unlikely sources of help, I realized I needed another brain to help think, so I called the most resourceful person I know, my mom. She’s a 40+ year veteran of newroom writing and editing, so she knows from sources that can get things done. I go inside and call her and freak out for a moment, then look back out and see that some cars have stopped. So I hang up and grab my cell phone and go across the street. I am very careful in crossing, lest I become another casualty. That road is very busy. If we have to go somewhere just across it with our daughter, we take the car. It has a speed limit of 45 mph, and in spite of the “deer crossing” sign, people speed like crazy on it.

By now more people have stopped, mostly dressed in their Sunday best coming home from church. I encourage two young boys not to stand between the deer and the woods, in case it decides to make a break for it. Someone calls animal control, who say it may take them a couple of hours to arrive since it’s Sunday. The police are also called, and again, it may take a while to get their animal control vehicles out there. I didn’t realize it was one and the same thing, I had had visions of some cartoon “dog pound” truck driving up.

Someone finds a blanket, and several people move the deer from the road onto the sidewalk. Its skin is intact, and the only sign of real trauma is that it is breathing very quickly and has a bloody muzzle. Its tongue is also sticking out. I run back to the house (again, trying not to get hit) and fill up a container with water, and get a big tupperware tub that had been storing yarn. Back at the deer, it drinks from a cup and someone washes some blood off of its muzzle.

Everyone wants to help, but people are still being sensible about the fact that this is a big wild animal that doesn’t like people. One woman is systematically crushing the line of ants that snake toward the deer. I call Animal Medical Hospital, who are rather stumped. Then I call a very close friend of mine who is a vet, and she asks several question aimed at determining what sorts of injuries the deer may have. We are relieved that all four legs are fine, she says it’s probably in shock, and we wonder what might be wrong with it to prevent it from getting up and away from us well-meaning but scary onlookers. I am trying to find a balance between “near enough to see what’s going on and help” and “far away enough to not freak the animal out any further.” I don’t think it’s a good sign that the deer is letting a woman pet its neck and whisper encouragements to it.

At this point, a guy in shorts, a tie-dyed shirt, and silver wraparound sunglasses stops. He’s a vet. He checks the deer over and says that he thinks it’s suffered fairly substantial head trauma. He says he’s willing to take it back to his office, but that he thinks it will probably need to be euthanized. That’s more humane than letting it die slowly on the sidewalk, though. A guy with a truck is willing to take her to this guy’s workplace, and I’m about to offer to store all the junk in his truck in our shed, when two animal control vans arrive. It’s only been about 45 minutes total, I think. I’ve lost all track of time, but I’m fairly sure it’s much less than the original “couple of hours” mentioned. Thank you, Charlotte police, you’re good people.

Animal control confers with the vet, and they give the deer some sedatives and strap it to a stretcher to carry it away. They also think it will be euthanized, simply because the head trauma is probably pretty severe.

People have begun to drift away during all this, seeing that there were people here trained to deal with the situation. I gather up my bin and container of water and go back across the street as the animal control vans drive off. The container has deer blood on it, and I throw it away. The blanket is still on the sidewalk, the original owner having left before the deer was done using it. Just as I am washing my hands at the outside hose, my husband and daughter drive back up. Traffic is moving on the road again. You would never know that anything had happened except for the blanket and a few spots of blood on the street. My husband doesn’t know anything is wrong, and encourages my daughter to show me all the things she got. I put on a happy face and play “excited mom.” Everything’s back to normal.

Because I am a naturally optimistic person, even when wracked by depression, I choose to see silver linings in things.

There were three deer that came out of the woods. Only one got hit. It could have been worse.

It was a good lesson in humanity. Many, many people stopped to help. The person with the blanket had their personal property ruined. The guy with the truck was going to have an even greater inconvenience for a wild animal that didn’t belong to anyone and that he didn’t even know existed five minutes before.

The Charlotte police responded quickly, considering it was a Sunday and a report of a wild animal, not a beloved household pet.

I was home and outside. I was able to bring water and make calls and be available.

The unfortunate thing is that the loss of habitat on the other side of the street continues. Perhaps deer have no place in the middle of the city. But much of the woods on the other side of the street are about to disappear to make room for athletic fields and I mourn their loss. I hope that this won’t cause any more accidents as the deer are driven further out.

On a final philosophical note, this was not what I wanted to have happen, and I am saddened because I love seeing deer, but perhaps a lesson can be taken away from this about how one lives one’s life. You never know where the day will take you.