Oh Deer

Well here it is, my least favorite time of the year: deer hunting season. I don’t mean hunting with a gun in the woods… I mean clobbering these stupid animals with my car. In the past I have hit so many deer with vehicles that I should be set for life when it comes to my venison needs.

Every November I wind up with a bad case of Deer Paranoia Syndrome, or DPS. Just last night I was driving home from a church function and a deer wandered out in front of me on a busy street near home. It actually emerged between two fences, stood on the curb as I slammed on my brakes, and then it gave me that look. You know the look. It was one of those deer-in-the-headlights kinds of looks, I guess you could say.

One time I was headed to work at a Pittsburgh radio station, and I was driving there from a couple hours away. I rammed into a deer and it crumpled the car’s front fender so badly that parts of the fender rubbed up against the tire every time I hit a bump. That certainly made for a fun drive. Oh, and it was Mrs. Smoot’s car, so you can imagine how thrilled she was when I turned it back over to her.

Another time I ran into one on the PA Turnpike while traveling through a construction zone at 50 mph. Oddly, it barely caused any visible damage, but still cost more than $800 to fix. Yet another time, I bonked into one within 300 feet of my apartment. That time, the only damage it did was that it knocked the deer horns off my car. For those of you who don’t live in deer-infested areas, “deer horns” are these stupid plastic things that we can put on our cars to make some sort of high-pitched noise while driving, and they’re allegedly supposed to scare deer away. Suuuuure, they do.