what follows is a sloppy, unedited but very true account of my first 4 hours of 2009.
i took the wife and kids to a small gathering at the sister-in-law's in a small town only 15 miles or so away. low-key, lots of kids, grilled burgers and fireworks.
being the teetotaler i am, after the formalities of the midnight celebration had wound down, i suggested to mrs. haskins that we should hit the road, seeing how i'd been up since 6:30 am and all. she rounded up the kids and we all said our goodbyes and started the 20 minute drive home, where peaceful slumber awaited me.
as we hit the country highway, we settled into some good music, the kids quieted down in the backseat and the bed and kitties awaited me.
about 2 miles into the journey, a car passed us flashing his lights, the good people signal that a cop had set up shop somewhere ahead.
instead of a cop, what awaited us was the carcass of a freshly killed deer, stretched across our lane on a dark curve. with no time to react, i ran smack dab over him, that sickening ba-thump as the tires jumped him. the truck seemed to weather it okay, except for a slightly lowered tone to the muffler.
"fuck," i thought to myself. "lucky me, i get to start off 2009 with a car repair bill."
there was no other issue with the way the truck performed so i opted to complete the rest of my journey, rather than pull over on the side of a dark road with a 65 mph speed limit and risk getting plowed into by some drunk yahoo trying to make it home with double vision on new year's eve: "family of four killed by drunk driver. father inexplicably found under truck with flashlight"...
except the headline would have been much better... trust me.
as we went on, the muffler started to sound normal again and i felt a little better. i hate paying mechanics more than i hate paying the government and, believe me, that's saying something.
so we finally make it home, get the truck into the garage and shepherd the kids inside. i grabbed the flashlight and inspected the front end of the truck. the bumper is okay, no fluids are leaking. only a thin plastic strip under the bumper is cracked. there was some blood and hair on it, and something about seeing that triggered...
the smell.
by this time, mrs. haskins had come out to make sure everything was okay. "goddamn, it stinks!" she said.
that's when i shone the flashlight further back along the undercarriage... and there it was: the deer. the whole goddamn deer.
"how is that fucking possible?!" asked mrs. haskins.
i went around to the back of the truck where his foggy dead eyes stared at me. "how the hell is he connected? it was 10 fucking miles!"
i lay on the garage floor alongside the truck and got my answer. his hoof had been hooked on impact by a brace to which the muffler is connected. i can't even begin to calculate the odds, but it's moot since it fucking happened. no time to get bogged down in statistics at that point.
the hoof was hanging on by about a half-inch strip of ligaments. a few more miles and i might have shaken him...
...but fate brought him home with me.
mrs. haskins fetched me a wood saw. i personally prefer hacksaws for this kind of work, but it was too late for style points. i had just enough room to get it to the angle i needed to saw through the tendons. it took 5 or 6 strokes, but it was awkward so i'll make no apologies for lack of precision.
the leg landed on the concrete with a dull thud and i went around the other side and pulled the hoof free.
about this time my 10 year old son came out to get a look, but it didn't agree with him and he scurried back inside.
now that the deer was no longer connected to the truck, i needed to get him out from under the rear end. mrs. haskins provided me with some bright yellow dishwashing gloves and i spent the next two or three minutes stretching them over my (apparently) freakishly large hands.
by this time a pool of blood was spreading onto the driveway, which made a nice murder-scene smear as i dragged him out. in the process, i flipped him over and found that, while the upward-facing part of him was more or less intact, the bottom part had been eaten away by the road, exposing his intestines and other delicacies.
now came the question of what to do with the dead hundred pound deer that was bleeding in my driveway at one o'clock in the morning. my dreams of sleeping in on new year's day were suddenly warped by a vision of the neighborhood kids waking up early for a full day of fun and games, only to find a mangled deer corpse in my yard.
i fully admit to not knowing how to properly dispose of a large dead animal in the middle of the night, so i reasoned that, at least in the meantime, i should commit him to the greenbelt adjacent to the cul de sac. with daylight i could figure out whether to bury him, call the city or make sausage.
so, with the help of mrs. haskins, i transferred the carcass to an old sheet, threw the severed hoof on top, and we began the hundred and fifty yard walk to the greenbelt (past five houses on each side of the street and under an eerily bright street lamp in the cul de sac, both of us now sporting bright yellow rubber gloves).
i wondered, but only briefly, what the neighbors might think had they looked outside to see us carrying a bloody sheet full of something at 1:30 a.m. into the woods.
but only briefly.
finally we maneuvered him into the tall grass and dumped him, then returned home to the bloody concrete.
i sprayed some driveway cleaner on the blood and sprayed it off (it actually cleaned up pretty easily, for future reference...), and sent the wife in to get cleaned up while i took the truck for a spin to be sure there'd been no mechanical damage. fortunately, the truck is fine, which is more than i can say for the deer or, for that matter, me.
i pulled back into the garage and went immediately to the shower.
afterwards, my daughter (who's always good with such things) provided me with research on how to handle the remains. turns out the city will come and pick dead animals up. she gave me the phone number, but as most if not all city offices are closed on holidays, i had little faith that that i would get any resolution before the weekend, if even then.
i went to the website and found out that, instead of calling the solid waste department, i could, in my situation, call 3-1-1. so, around 2 a.m. that's what i did.
after pushing "1" to speak english, i was connected to cedric. cedric is a nice guy and if i ever meet him, i'll sure tell him so.
i recounted my tale and he was amazed that the deer had held on for so long. in a way, i was proud to have surprised a 3-1-1 operator with anything. you'd sort of think they'd heard it all. anyway...
cedric tells me that not only will they pick it up, they'll pick it up tonight and he took my information. the only catch was that i needed to place it at the curb. my curb.
i suggested i might ought to put it in a garbage bag. cedric thought that would be a swell idea.
and so, at 2:30 a.m., mrs. haskins and i got dressed, dug up another goddamn pair of yellow rubber gloves, grabbed a garbage bag and the flashlight and went traipsing back to the greenbelt to retrieve the carcass.
i could hear a coyote yapping, but he sounded a ways off. even so, i was in no mood to fight a live animal over a dead animal, so we stepped up the pace.
and sure enough, there he was.
mrs. haskins' job was to hold the bag open, since i was wearing the gloves. she also had to hold the flashlight in the crook of her arm (the beam of which caught the steam rising from his innards).
my first thought was to get him in ass-first and then lift the upper body as she slid the bag up over him. this proved to be a stupid plan, as the loss of blood had lightened the torso while the chest and head retained their full weight.
so, we readjusted and worked him in headfirst. this was achieved by grabbing the hide of the back and lifting, which provided an oddly spongy texture beneath the skin. finally we were able to turn the bag upright and he crumbled in there surprisingly well.
the bag was awkward to carry, so i dragged it as far as i could, until we were to the end of the slick grass and to the street (and, of course, back in the glow of the street lamp). at this point, mrs. haskins took one side of the bag and i took the other.
i wondered, but only briefly, what the neighbors might think had they looked outside to see us carrying a bloody plastic bag full of something at 3 a.m. out of the woods.
but only briefly.
finally we wrestled it to the curb and tied up the bag and came back in to clean up once again.
it's ten minutes to four now and the sleep i thought awaited me 3 hours ago is probably hours away.
the kids are asleep now and mrs. haskins has settled into some drowsy tv viewing. maybe i'll try that.
the only thing is... there's a fucking dead deer in a bloody plastic bag sitting in front of my house.
oh yeah, happy new year.
i took the wife and kids to a small gathering at the sister-in-law's in a small town only 15 miles or so away. low-key, lots of kids, grilled burgers and fireworks.
being the teetotaler i am, after the formalities of the midnight celebration had wound down, i suggested to mrs. haskins that we should hit the road, seeing how i'd been up since 6:30 am and all. she rounded up the kids and we all said our goodbyes and started the 20 minute drive home, where peaceful slumber awaited me.
as we hit the country highway, we settled into some good music, the kids quieted down in the backseat and the bed and kitties awaited me.
about 2 miles into the journey, a car passed us flashing his lights, the good people signal that a cop had set up shop somewhere ahead.
instead of a cop, what awaited us was the carcass of a freshly killed deer, stretched across our lane on a dark curve. with no time to react, i ran smack dab over him, that sickening ba-thump as the tires jumped him. the truck seemed to weather it okay, except for a slightly lowered tone to the muffler.
"fuck," i thought to myself. "lucky me, i get to start off 2009 with a car repair bill."
there was no other issue with the way the truck performed so i opted to complete the rest of my journey, rather than pull over on the side of a dark road with a 65 mph speed limit and risk getting plowed into by some drunk yahoo trying to make it home with double vision on new year's eve: "family of four killed by drunk driver. father inexplicably found under truck with flashlight"...
except the headline would have been much better... trust me.
as we went on, the muffler started to sound normal again and i felt a little better. i hate paying mechanics more than i hate paying the government and, believe me, that's saying something.
so we finally make it home, get the truck into the garage and shepherd the kids inside. i grabbed the flashlight and inspected the front end of the truck. the bumper is okay, no fluids are leaking. only a thin plastic strip under the bumper is cracked. there was some blood and hair on it, and something about seeing that triggered...
the smell.
by this time, mrs. haskins had come out to make sure everything was okay. "goddamn, it stinks!" she said.
that's when i shone the flashlight further back along the undercarriage... and there it was: the deer. the whole goddamn deer.
"how is that fucking possible?!" asked mrs. haskins.
i went around to the back of the truck where his foggy dead eyes stared at me. "how the hell is he connected? it was 10 fucking miles!"
i lay on the garage floor alongside the truck and got my answer. his hoof had been hooked on impact by a brace to which the muffler is connected. i can't even begin to calculate the odds, but it's moot since it fucking happened. no time to get bogged down in statistics at that point.
the hoof was hanging on by about a half-inch strip of ligaments. a few more miles and i might have shaken him...
...but fate brought him home with me.
mrs. haskins fetched me a wood saw. i personally prefer hacksaws for this kind of work, but it was too late for style points. i had just enough room to get it to the angle i needed to saw through the tendons. it took 5 or 6 strokes, but it was awkward so i'll make no apologies for lack of precision.
the leg landed on the concrete with a dull thud and i went around the other side and pulled the hoof free.
about this time my 10 year old son came out to get a look, but it didn't agree with him and he scurried back inside.
now that the deer was no longer connected to the truck, i needed to get him out from under the rear end. mrs. haskins provided me with some bright yellow dishwashing gloves and i spent the next two or three minutes stretching them over my (apparently) freakishly large hands.
by this time a pool of blood was spreading onto the driveway, which made a nice murder-scene smear as i dragged him out. in the process, i flipped him over and found that, while the upward-facing part of him was more or less intact, the bottom part had been eaten away by the road, exposing his intestines and other delicacies.
now came the question of what to do with the dead hundred pound deer that was bleeding in my driveway at one o'clock in the morning. my dreams of sleeping in on new year's day were suddenly warped by a vision of the neighborhood kids waking up early for a full day of fun and games, only to find a mangled deer corpse in my yard.
i fully admit to not knowing how to properly dispose of a large dead animal in the middle of the night, so i reasoned that, at least in the meantime, i should commit him to the greenbelt adjacent to the cul de sac. with daylight i could figure out whether to bury him, call the city or make sausage.
so, with the help of mrs. haskins, i transferred the carcass to an old sheet, threw the severed hoof on top, and we began the hundred and fifty yard walk to the greenbelt (past five houses on each side of the street and under an eerily bright street lamp in the cul de sac, both of us now sporting bright yellow rubber gloves).
i wondered, but only briefly, what the neighbors might think had they looked outside to see us carrying a bloody sheet full of something at 1:30 a.m. into the woods.
but only briefly.
finally we maneuvered him into the tall grass and dumped him, then returned home to the bloody concrete.
i sprayed some driveway cleaner on the blood and sprayed it off (it actually cleaned up pretty easily, for future reference...), and sent the wife in to get cleaned up while i took the truck for a spin to be sure there'd been no mechanical damage. fortunately, the truck is fine, which is more than i can say for the deer or, for that matter, me.
i pulled back into the garage and went immediately to the shower.
afterwards, my daughter (who's always good with such things) provided me with research on how to handle the remains. turns out the city will come and pick dead animals up. she gave me the phone number, but as most if not all city offices are closed on holidays, i had little faith that that i would get any resolution before the weekend, if even then.
i went to the website and found out that, instead of calling the solid waste department, i could, in my situation, call 3-1-1. so, around 2 a.m. that's what i did.
after pushing "1" to speak english, i was connected to cedric. cedric is a nice guy and if i ever meet him, i'll sure tell him so.
i recounted my tale and he was amazed that the deer had held on for so long. in a way, i was proud to have surprised a 3-1-1 operator with anything. you'd sort of think they'd heard it all. anyway...
cedric tells me that not only will they pick it up, they'll pick it up tonight and he took my information. the only catch was that i needed to place it at the curb. my curb.
i suggested i might ought to put it in a garbage bag. cedric thought that would be a swell idea.
and so, at 2:30 a.m., mrs. haskins and i got dressed, dug up another goddamn pair of yellow rubber gloves, grabbed a garbage bag and the flashlight and went traipsing back to the greenbelt to retrieve the carcass.
i could hear a coyote yapping, but he sounded a ways off. even so, i was in no mood to fight a live animal over a dead animal, so we stepped up the pace.
and sure enough, there he was.
mrs. haskins' job was to hold the bag open, since i was wearing the gloves. she also had to hold the flashlight in the crook of her arm (the beam of which caught the steam rising from his innards).
my first thought was to get him in ass-first and then lift the upper body as she slid the bag up over him. this proved to be a stupid plan, as the loss of blood had lightened the torso while the chest and head retained their full weight.
so, we readjusted and worked him in headfirst. this was achieved by grabbing the hide of the back and lifting, which provided an oddly spongy texture beneath the skin. finally we were able to turn the bag upright and he crumbled in there surprisingly well.
the bag was awkward to carry, so i dragged it as far as i could, until we were to the end of the slick grass and to the street (and, of course, back in the glow of the street lamp). at this point, mrs. haskins took one side of the bag and i took the other.
i wondered, but only briefly, what the neighbors might think had they looked outside to see us carrying a bloody plastic bag full of something at 3 a.m. out of the woods.
but only briefly.
finally we wrestled it to the curb and tied up the bag and came back in to clean up once again.
it's ten minutes to four now and the sleep i thought awaited me 3 hours ago is probably hours away.
the kids are asleep now and mrs. haskins has settled into some drowsy tv viewing. maybe i'll try that.
the only thing is... there's a fucking dead deer in a bloody plastic bag sitting in front of my house.
oh yeah, happy new year.
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