R.I.P. Bambi

I am currently sitting at the school during Thomas’s football practice, so I figured this would be a good time to write my deer hunting experience.

When I was leaving the house Wednesday morning around 6:50AM, there was a big white dog in the yard playing with Rico. This dog, Benelli, comes down occasionally when the battery in his collar goes dead and he can get past his invisible fence. So I called his owner, who I should be on a first name basis with, and she told me she would call her husband and see if he could come and get the dog. I told her that I had to go to work, but when he comes over, he typically doesn’t leave if Rico is out. We hung up and I left to take the kids to a friend’s house that was watching them through the summer while I was back in the office. When I drop them off, I have to back track past my house and get to town that way. After I passed the house, I called Brian to tell him that the dog had been picked up and taken back to his house. I have SYNC in my car and Brian could hear the seat belt warning going off because I had forgotten to put it on. He mentioned that I need to put it on, so I told him I would and hung up. I put the seat belt on.

It was incredibly foggy outside and the sun was just coming up but was hidden behind a cloud. I was heading south on Ballentine towards 41 and got almost to where the S curve is when this deer came out of the corn field to my left. It didn’t walk on to the road… it was charging on to the road. If I had been there a second later, it would have hit the right side of my car. If I had been there a second earlier, it would have been in my driver side door. As soon as its feet hit the pavement, it was directly in front of my car. I didn’t have time to hit the brakes. I didn’t have time to swerve even if I wanted to. There was zero time to react in any way. The next thing I knew, the hood of my car was crunched up almost to my windshield and the deer was flying through the air and landed pretty far away from my car. I sat there for a minute to get my bearings and made sure that I was ok but then started smelling a really sweet smell and a really hot (not burning) smell. We had just talked about exploding cars the night before at football practice so I started flipping out thinking the car would explode. I turned the car off, grabbed my purse and everything I take to work with me, got out of the car, and took off running down the road – just in case.

I figured since I was ok, I’d call Brian first to let him know. Whenever he needs to get ahold of me while I’m at work, he calls my desk phone and I obviously wouldn’t be there on time. When he answered, I told him that it was a good thing he told me to put on my seat belt. He answered with “What? Did you wreck?” But he thought I was just messing with him so he wasn’t taking me seriously yet. I told him yes, I had hit a deer. He still didn’t believe me so I told him again. Once he figured out that I was serious, he asked if the car was drivable. I had driven a car with a smashed up end before but I wasn’t too sure that this could be driven, especially with all the antifreeze pooling on the road. I tried to tell him that I could handle it on my own, but he told me he was coming back from Vandalia anyway and he would be there as soon as he could.

I hung up with Brian and dialed 911. I guess I was close enough to Champaign County so my call went into the Urbana 911 center. They told me that since I was in Clark County, they had to route my call to their dispatch. Once I got there, they told me that Ohio State Highway Patrol handles “these kind of incidents” so she routed me over to OSP. OSP finally sent someone out.

The next couple of calls were to my boss. I left messages for her on her cell and her desk phone. I also tried to get a message to my team lead through a few other people since I didn’t have her direct number. About this time, an older man stopped to see if I was ok and he stayed with me until the cop got there which was about 45 minutes after I called 911.

The cop pulled in first with Brian right behind him. As Brian drove by, I could see his face completely drop. I can only imagine the thoughts going through his head. The cop got out and took my license, insurance, and registration forms and took my report. I told him that the deer had been moving around a lot in the ditch so he went over to look at it. Once he got there, he informed me that the deer had “expired” and that I could take it if I wanted. If you know me, you know I’m REALLY picky when it comes to the food that I eat – I don’t eat deer meat. But even if we wanted to take it, we wouldn’t have been able to. I called a few people, but no one was able to get the deer.

It took the cop about 30 minutes to take his report and then told us that we could call a tow truck. Brian called Allstate while waiting on the tow truck and took care of setting up our claim. I had About an hour later, the tow truck got there and told us that we could go ahead and he would take care of getting the car to the shop.

One of the wonderful things about our insurance policy is that it doesn’t cover a rental. Yes, we have three vehicles, but we hadn’t renewed the tags on the truck yet. So we went back to the house to make sure we had everything in order and headed to New Carlisle to get a new sticker. I had figured I would need to go to the shop to do paperwork or something, so I had told the tow truck driver that I didn’t need to get anything out of my car while he was there which in turn prompted a trip all the way to Vandalia to get everything I needed out of my car.

Since it was around 11AM, Brian and I decided to go have lunch together. I don’t think it had set in yet by this point because once I started trying to eat, I couldn’t hold the fork steady enough to get food on it. But when I finally got my food down, Brian and I said out goodbyes and headed our separate ways.

I finally made it in to work at 11:56AM.