In my PR life, I was working at the hottest high-tech firm in the country, just before the dot.com bust … and one of my favorite bosses of all times, thought I was some sort of animal … actually a couple of animals. First she complimented me and said that I was a “media hound,” a good thing for clients because earned media (media coverage) arguably adds credibility to a marketing mix. Ha. She also called me a “deer in headlights” when it came to billing the client for every minute of my day, and launching “best practices” which actually did little more for the client than run up their bill. I take both as compliments … I digress …
And speaking of deer in said headlights …
So, I saw my first actual deer in headlights the other day, about 5:30 a.m. on the backroads of Florida. Sure I have seen lots of deer on the side of the road, but this buck was positioned right on the shoulder like a hitchhiker. I slowed down. I threw on the brights. And he looked directly at me with the most bewildered, empty, clueless look … as if to say, “What do I do? What do I do?”
“Be cool,” I was thinking.
He was so not cool. He was very not cool, man.
As I slowed my sweet ride — a water extraction truck — he decided he would try to get to the other side. Man, I have seen many a deer and antelope glide gracefully over a barbed wire fence and across a pasture, more akin to their natural habitat.
By comparison, they don’t do roads well.
… How to describe? The normally surefooted-buck stumbed and slid and limped across the road, — sort of like a linebacker in high heels in a comedy sketch — as the deer’s hooves clanked on the asphalt … or maybe he looked the way I look on ice skates. Not pretty.
There was no other traffic, no gators crossing and I was able to slow down and let Mr. Clumsy pass in peace, to go enjoy the green visual splotches he was probably still experiencing in his retinas. It was his lucky day … “Go enjoy the after effects of the light show, buddy.”
As the Dirty Gig (helping to clean up Hurricane Matthew) first took me east to Florida and then north to the worse-hit North Carolina, I saw many a heap of road kill … most of which had at sometime been yet another deer in headlights.
After about a dozen sightings, it was then that I formulated Ping’s Rebuttal To Darwin’s Theory of Evolution … or the PRTDTE.
Mr. Darwin: If there is any validity to evolutionary theory, then tell me why oh why have generations of deer not evolved to avoid the highway? Why do they instead risk and typically lose their lives, like the low-minded chicken, to get to the other side? Is it so important to them that they risk their lives just to get their own yellow, diamond-shaped sign on the thoroughfare?
Don’t get me wrong, I just watched and loved a documentary on The Galapagos Islands where Darwin took shore leave from the H.M.S. Beagle and studied iguanas, penguins and my favorite the blue-footed booby. I see his point … But even so … How could it be that deer didn’t get the evolution memo?
After millions of years, deer have not adapted and mutated to avoid walking across the road … or rather, nearly crossing the road, avoiding the transformation into one of those red splotch “stamps” in the road — you know, the red stamps that get lighter colored and lighter colored with each turn of the killer car’s wheels.
With hour after hour in the truck from Fort Worth to Lake City, Fla., to Jacksonville to Raleigh, N.C., to Rocky Mount, N.C., to Edenton, N.C., and beyond, I pondered deer and the demise thereof.
And sadly, there were many examples along the way for reference and remorse. And they were usually not neat, clean kills, leaving the venison off to the side for respectful viewing.
Pretty sure I saw an example of just about every stage of rigor, and/or decomposition … Funny the things a writer’s mind will focus on after a few hundred miles in a noisy, slow, rough-riding truck.
As the miles flew by, I began to group and categorize the roadkills. (Yes, I binge watch “The Walking Dead,” why do you ask?) And dead deer were trending … so to speak.
IF I had a favorite specimen, it might be The Wine Skin Look. By this point in the deer’s demise, most of the alarming color is gone, the frame is in shambles, but the outer covering remains. Ha … think about the first guy in history who saw this and said, “Hey … I think I can clean that up and tote booze in it.” … Goatskin, deerskin, whatever …)
The Wine Skin Look is a precursor to The Chamois Throw Look … the point where the remains are best suited for cleaning one’s car windows, or staying warm, or perhaps fashioning a loin cloth and some matching knee-high moccasins. Again, I salute our ancestors’ resourcefulness …
On the more horrific end of the dead-deer spectrum, there is that Fresh Kill stage. It’s the one that freaks me out the most … You can still see a very alarmed expression on the face of the animal. It’s the “Oh S#@&!” look that no doubt immediately follows The Deer In Headlights Look mentioned above.
I absolutely hate Family Photo Day … that’s what I began to call the scene — after several examples — where there were three or four victims, of differing age and size, that apparently bit the big one together. “Come on kids … link antlers or nubs … come on across, it’s safe … No, I don’t know what those rapidly approaching lights are all about …”
Another non-crowd pleaser is The Day 2 Side Of The Road Look. RM has taken control, having its way with the animal and has begun to erase any peaceful, tranquil body language. Ha … You’ve probably seen it … It could also be called The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Look, as natural gasses balloon up in the former animal, contorting the frame and the limbs. For an even weirder visual, I maintain that many of the deer in this stage look like end tables from a distance … their four legs jutting out toward the sky … like a table overturned near ringside at a professional wrestling event … or a tossed table in the man cave after the home team fumbles on the two-yard-line.
Ha … I know … all of this is totally gross, and perhaps too much information on how sordid my idea of humor can be. So let’s move on.
Thank goodness, I have never seen a mangled, yet surviving deer on the side of the road. I can crack jokes about the deer-ly departed, but a severely injured Bambi would break my heart … really.
Ah … the road goes on forever, for some of us anyway … and you never know what might find its way across the road and SPLAT … into the blog.
Know what I sayin?
