Might as well get this out of the way now. It’s time to put the Um with the Yang and bring this day to a close. The celebration of 160 was put to the side this evening due to an unfortunate situation my wife experienced earlier tonight while on her way back from the dog show. She was likely having a similar good day thanks to a couple of good runs from the little ones. Unfortunately, those same dogs found themselves looking up from the floor mats on their way home thanks to this:
Before anyone panics, everyone is fine. Well, everyone but the SUV and the dumbass deer that decided to play Frogger. In the deer’s defense, this is the first weekend of shotgun season so they are all probably running for their lives and throwing caution out the door. I just wish they were smart enough to stay in the woods out of sight being that it was after sundown and the hunters should have already called it quits for the day. As it turns out, Linda was driving by the Jubilee College entrance which is about halfway between Kickapoo and Brimfield IL. This is essentially big buck region and this particular corridor is deer alley. Most of the time they stay to the sides and tend to heed the roadways to the faster and heavier vehicles. You can always tell those not from the area because those are the ones who unknowingly have a death wish by speeding through these parts. Apparently this particular deer decided to test fate on a dead run and almost made it. By my estimates, it was probably less than 2 feet from freedom when it was clipped by the SUV bumper. Luckily, that particular area had a reduced speed due to a small subdivision. Linda said she locked them up but wasn’t able to avoid the impact. Guessing this sudden deceleration is what sent the boys for a thrill ride. It was a pretty big deer and fur ended up flying from the impact, but those deer are tough. I totaled a Daytona on one and it was still alive afterwards (broken legs, but still alive). I took a walk in the dark, but couldn’t find any remains so guessing it is nursing a pretty sore hind at the moment.
Catch a couple more shots after the jump
Although it will still take a pretty penny to fix, the overall damage is less than I had imagined when she called me after the accident. All the damage appears to be isolated on the bumper cowling, the fog lamp and likely the headlamp although it is still working but pretty loose.
Miraculously, the quarter panel looks okay and the inner bumper frame looks to be intact as well. The good news is the air bags did not need to deploy so that means the impact wasn’t as severe as it could have been (and that would have added some big time costs to get those replaced). Don’t get me wrong, if they were needed I definitely would want them to go off to help Linda prevent injuries, but this is an indicator she was able to get the speed down significantly. This all falls under comprehension so it is all covered by the insurance without impacting our status, but there is a definite inconvenience to us, especially with some things that are happening this week. For comparison of the damage, here is another shot.
In case you are curious, that fog light no longer works. If there is a silver lining in all this, Linda can no longer give me ANY grief about me hitting that deer a long time ago. She likes to use that as leverage in our “who is a better driver” arguments. With this equalizer and the fact she has broken like 30 windshields and oh yeah, that very rare and endangered OWL she massacred with her Wrangler pretty much puts this discussion in the books.
The odds were stacked against us and they finally caught up with us. Let’s hope for better luck next week!
