Reprise

The caller ID said it was Lynn on her cell. Since it was 4:33, and she leaves work - on a good day - at 4:00 sharp, I pretty much knew where on her route home she had to be: right where it happened last time. And the time being what it was, it wasn't about a work issue, or she would have called before she left. So instead of answering, "Hi, Lynn," or "Hey, Lynn, what's up?", I answered the phone with, "Did the deer come alive again?"

I'm lucky she didn't run right off the road, she was laughing so hard. "How did you know?"

Laughingly I explained my reasoning and she - still laughing - filled me in on the details. It wasn't the same deer. I knew it couldn't be, since as the days went on I'd heard how, as the snow warmed, the first deer tilted at a 45 degree angle, then lay flat again with an eagle perched on it having a good meal. This time the deer was 3 miles south of the first, and there was no fresh snowfall or plow for an excuse. She'd passed this deer lying frozen on the shoulder for about three days, and she knew to look for it. Thus she wasn't at all startled to see it standing up again in the snow, just like the last one.

Not so for the tailgater she'd had riding her bumper all the way up 87 from St. Croix Falls. As soon as the deer came into view, he slammed on his brakes. He never did make it back up to riding her bumper again.

"We've got a practical joker up here, and whoever it is, I love him!" Not only had she gotten a good laugh to share with me, but the deer rid her of a slightly different kind of dangerous pest.

This time she promises to take her camera along on her way in to work tomorrow, shoot the deer, and email me a copy. When/if she does, I'll post it here.

Car Update

The claims adjuster will be out tomorrow. Either 7:30-9:30 AM as I requested, or 2:30 like my dad thought the recorded message said when they called the home phone despite my request to only call my cell and talk to me. Whatever. I'm not waiting around. Rich will be here to handle him/her whenever it is. I'll be working in the cold car, the one that still has lights and steering and no big gaping holes and blue and brown puddles underneath.

My friend Lynn called me on her way home from work: "I saw where you hit your deer!" She didn't see the deer, just the debris from the car. It seems it's a notorious deer crossing corridor. She knows personally of two other car-deer accidents within feet of the site.

She had her own tale, one we could feel free to laugh at because it didn't involve her truck, just her neighborhood. About 6 miles south of Grantsburg, WI, along Hwy. 87 near the Fish Lake Wildlife Refuge, sombody hit a deer that then laid on the shoulder of the road and froze. With the next snowfall, the plow came along with enough speed to kick up the carcass and toss it into the snow piled in the ditch - standing up! So there it stands, a bit battered and bent, but if you don't look close, looking ready to step out and attack another car.

Motorists beware.