It has been quite some time since my last post. The theme for the last month could be travel. Brian spent 10 days hunting in Montana with some friends of ours that have a ranch out there. He was home a few hours, and then off to Raleigh for work. The following week I went to Pennsylvania for the annual Penn State Dairy Cattle Nutrition Workshop that I manage. This past weekend I travelled to Tupelo, Mississippi for the Southern Regional Dairy Challenge. We were blessed with safe travels through all of that.
Then, last night I was doing the most mundane of tasks, feeding sheep. I drove over to New Hope, fed, watered, checked for new marks, and then headed to Wal-Mart for some supplies to make chicken broth.
That was the point where mundane ended. As I was driving along, a deer jumped/ran out in front of me. There was no where to go and no time to stop, so I slammed into it, hitting the doe broadside with the front of the truck. I didn't see her until the split second before we collided; I braked, but there was no way to avoid hitting her. About a second after the deer hit, the hood flew up and I couldn't see a thing. Somehow I managed to stop without stalling out the truck (confession: having to stop suddenly and forgetting to hit the clutch, then being rear-ended is one of my 'worst-case' fears when driving a stick-shift) but it did die shortly after we stopped and would not start again. Something I didn't know until last night, once the engine cut out the hazard lights came on automatically (which was a good thing, because I was fumbling around trying to find them). I was stopped in the middle of the road, partially into the lane of oncoming traffic.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking, okay I'll get out of the truck, move the deer, put down the hood and go on. Wrong! When I got out I realized the deer had really done a number on the truck (the Colorado, for those of you who know "the truck" could mean any one of four that sit around here). The hood flew up because the whole front end was smashed. Radiator crushed and leaking, belt gone, entire grill area smashed to smithereens, driver's side headlights and passenger's side antenna dangling. The bumper didn't seem to have any damage, and the airbag didn't deploy. While I was trying to take all of this in, a nice lady behind me stopped, put on her flashers and directed traffic until the fire truck and police arrived. As I repeated to Brian several times, I was fine. I was going somewhere around 50 mph at the time of the incident and started braking before we actually hit, so basically it just felt like I came to a quick stop, and I was wearing my seat belt.
I am very thankful to have escaped injury. And I am thankful for the people who stopped to help.
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