Trego's Mountain Ear

I spent a couple of hours Sunday on a task I didn’t want to do.  The decision to give me an unwanted task was made by someone saving time – driving a little too fast for the conditions, and leaving me with a badly injured doe in the middle of the trailer court.

The task was complicated by someone calling the game warden.  Game warden didn’t get the call, so a deputy sheriff showed up to finish the animal off.  A 12 gauge to her lungs left her suffocating in her own blood, so I grabbed the old High Standard and did a head shot.  By definition, a mercy killing should be merciful.

Understand, I’m not angry with the cop – I don’t imagine he wanted to kill a doe on his Sunday morning.  And I don’t expect a high standard of marksmanship to go with the badge.  Some cops shoot well.  Most drive well.  And I don’t expect any of them to want to drive out and kill something on a Sunday morning.

So, because of a bit of careless driving, there’s a cop driving back to town who has done his job, and not enjoyed a minute of it, and me, the guy who finished the deer up close and personal with a head shot.  Neither of us had an uplifting experience that Sunday morning.

Four or five times a year, I have the unscheduled, unwanted task of disposing of the body after someone hits a deer alongside my place.  If I leave it on the road, it’s a risk to my dogs, and the neighbor’s dogs.  It has to be done.  At 75, it’s a bit harder to load the body into the pickup and haul it off.  When I’m lucky,  the deer is already dead.  When I’m really lucky, the guy who hit it, or the next guy to come along, has already used a pistol in a headshot.  When I’m luckiest, drivers haven’t hit any deer – and that’s most days.

Still, it has me thinking – I probably spend eight hours a year cleaning up road killed deer.  Say I have a mile of road frontage – just for easy math.  It takes two minutes to drive by at 30 mph, and only one minute at 60 mph (see why I’m using easy math?).  Now let’s look at the time balance – I have 480 minutes involved in cleaning up 5 roadkills.  Round it up to 500 for easy math.  Five drivers didn’t save any time because they hit a deer.  No, make that four – the ambulance didn’t stop or slow down.  Still, that’s four with dead deer, auto body damage and no time saved.

My rough calculations show that driving by my place at 60 mph instead of the legal 35 can save you, at best, a minute.   Since I am already putting in 500 minutes in cleaning up bodies – and we also have about another hour of the deputy’s time on this last one – is it asking so much to just follow the bloody speed limit and look out for deer when you drive by?  Sure, it may take an extra minute – but that minute isn’t saved – it’s passed on to me as a damned unpleasant task.  It’s passed on this time to a deputy, in an unpleasant job, who hears my unvoiced criticism of his shooting ability in the single round from my 22 as he gets in his cruiser. 

I’m 75.  It’s taking me longer to clean up.  I don’t mind picking up behind the ambulance – saving the crew a few minutes may save a life.  When the savings in time isn’t measured in life or death,  asking my neighbors to follow the speed limit doesn’t seem unreasonable.  Most already do.