The Ballad of Mickie VS the Deer

Once the hoofs and tread were flying, the wide eyed doe and the white knuckled driver had the same goal, not colliding!  Were we lucky or unlucky?  Read on...

Several Hours Earlier:

We had picked up Dans grandma Mar Mar and went our for dinner, we had a lovely time.  We ran over to Costco for gas and to do some shopping, Mar Mar had a blast buying giant vats of peanut butter and bricks of beef.  She keeps me laughing, and is really fun to hang out with.  We three decided that it was time for desert so I dazzled her with my GPS.  We call her Cal, after the computer with a young girls spirit in an episode of Dr. Who called "Silence in the Library".  I asked Cal where the nearest Dairy Queen was and we made our way over for hot fudge sundaes and Blizzards, what a decadent bunch we are!  After enjoying our treats, Mar Mar ordered a shake for Uncle Rick who remained back at the house and we chuckled while the obviously new girl struggled with the shake machine flipping ice cream off the beaters like a bad sit com.  She was very sweet, but clearly still learning the ropes.

We got on the road and as we neared the bridge on hwy 70 in St. Charles, traffic suddenly came to a standstill, and we were in the far left lane with only one exit to go before getting stuck at the bridge.  I managed to get over one nice person at a time and we waved our thanks and got off the highway.  We looked towards the bridge and saw flashing emergency lights everywhere right at the entrance of the bridge.  Dan said, "Mickie, I guess you're just unlucky."  I replied that no, not unlucky, very, very lucky indeed.  If not for stopping to pick up the extra shake on our way out, we could have been on the bridge for that accident!  That is the way I see things.   Feeling quite full of myself for my good luck, we made our way through the other highways and byways having plugged in Mar Mars home address into Cal and found our alternate route back to her house.

Oak Tree Print from Voice of the Trees deck, It might be my deers boyfriend! Click the pic to see it larger.

A Little Dark Road

Once I knew the way, I left Cal running anyway, and she lead me down a turn that I am familiar with but don't normally take.  By now it was 9:00 and dark, and on this little two lane road right next to a corn field, we were only 10 minutes from Mar Mars house.  Even at 45 miles an hour I spotted tiny frogs  hopping hear the side of the road, and I was hoping they weren't hopping under my tires.  I caught a large dark shadow moving quickly on the right side of the car and before I knew it, my headlights illuminated a tawny colored doe running quickly into the road right in front of me!  Without even thinking I swerved hard to the left and braked at the same time ending up halfway in the other lane.  Dan and Mar Mar both stunned hadn't seen the deer until after I took evasive maneuvers.  The frightened deer looked Mar Mar right in the eye and said, "Hey, I have the right of way!" which was probably correct, the doe being a pedestrian and all, even though most deer know very little about traffic laws.  We came so close to colliding that you couldn't have slipped a dime between my front quarter panel and that deer.   I fully expected to hear and feel a crash any moment, but it never came.  The deer dashed off into the dark field.  Once Dan and Mar Mar had breathed a sigh of relief, and my heart started again, I thanked my guardians and the deer for it's part, and we laughed all the way home about our near miss while I bragged unabashedly on my superior driving skills and reflexes.

When we got to Mar Mars house, Uncle Rick met us coming in and told Mar Mar, "The next time you go running around all hours of the night with your wild friends you better check in and let me know where you are!"  We all laughed, I'm sure he heard that many times when he was younger from her, and it gave him a chance to fire it back.  He loved his shake and we shared our tales of adventure on the road.

I told Mar Mar, when we take you out, we really want to show you a wild time!