During the fall of my senior year of high-school, I was driving home one night on the way home from a date. While it is amazing in itself that I was on a date, that's not the premise of the story. It was about 1:15 in the morning and I was supposed to have been home by 1:00. Hoping I could get back just a little faster, I pushed my car up to about 65 and was moving down the deserted highway at a nice clip.

As I was leaving a small town, I rounded a corner and slowed my car back down to the speed limit again. I had a big old car and it wasn't exactly nimble in its turn radius. After going around the corner, a hill presented itself and I went up and over it. My speedometer found its way to about 50 miles per hour just as I went over the crest and started going down the other side.

All of a sudden, a rather large deer sprang out of the ditch and onto the road just in front of my car. In only a split second, I hit the brakes and swerved to the left, but it wasn't enough. In a blur, my car skidded, hit the deer, and was back on its path again.

After regaining complete control of my car and getting back into my lane, I slowed down the car and pulled off onto the shoulder and sat for a few seconds. I could tell that the right front side of my car was messed-up, but my engine was still running and I was running late getting home already. Instead of going back and looking for the deer, I took my foot off the brake, and started back down the road home.

The whole way home I had second thoughts about turning around, but decided that it would be the best if I just got home and tried to figure out everything there. I wondered if the deer was dead, and I wondered what my parents would say about my little accident. To make matters worse, I had to get up the next morning and go to work. By coincidence, the location was very close to where the accident had occured.

As soon as I pulled into the driveway, I hopped out of the car and turned on the light outside our garage to survey the damage. Note: If you have a weak stomach, you might want to skip down a paragraph about right now. When I flicked on the light and walked outside, I wondered how my car had kept running. The entire right front side of the car was pushed inward and the light was completely smashed out. The bumper was intact, but upon closer inspection, I found chunks of inside-out deer skin sticking to it in several places. Just beyond this, and all down the right side of my car was a bucket worth of blood. There was a huge streak and little droplets painted everywhere. It was then that I noticed a stench. Looking at the rim of my wheel, I found globs of partially-digested weeds and whatever else Bambi's mom had for dinner before I mowed her down.

This last discovery was enough to make me gag a bit and I immediatly went inside. I walked upstairs very quietly and into my parents room. In a rather nonchalant voice I said, "Mom, I hit a deer." Fortunately, her first statement was "Are you OK?" rather than, "How's the car?" After I told her that I was fine, that other question eventually came up and I took her outside to inspect.

Before I even took another look at the car, I grabbed the hose from nearby and started uncoiling it. As soon as she had gave it a look, I sprayed down the entire car and washed all the organic nasty-ness away. All that was left of the accident was my car with its new twisted metal smile.

The next day, I took a little extra time on my way to work in order to check out where the accident had been. Upon arriving, I didn't find hardly anything too out of the ordinary. There were a few small chunks of my light, but the only thing that remained of the deer was a large red streak on the road. Some Ted Nugent wanabee had probably come along in a pickup soon afterward and praised the Lord for the bounty of deer jerky that they would soon be able to make.

I drove that mangled car for several weeks before it was declared "totalled" by the insurance company and sent off to be used as spare parts. It was a good, sturdy car and the accident probably would have been a lot worse were I not driving that beast. My friends were sad when it was gone, because they could no longer make fun of me because of the eight-track player that was housed in its dashboard.

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