Red
by: Mary Oliver
All the while
I was teaching
in the state of Virginia
I wanted to see
gray fox.
Finally I found him.
He was in the highway.
He was singing
his death song.
I picked him up
and carried him
into a field
while the cars kept coming.
He showed me
how he could ripple
how he could bleed.
Goodbye I said
to the light of his eyes
as the cars went by.
Two mornings later
I found the other.
She was in the highway.
She was singing
her death song.
I picked her up
and carried her
into the field
where she rippled
half of her gray
half of her red
while the cars kept coming.
While the cars kept coming.
Gray fox, and gray fox.
Red, red, red.
If you live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you have seen roadkill. If you have lived in the Upper Peninsula for any length of time, chances are good that you have been responsible for causing roadkill. I've lived most of my life in the U.P., and I have taken out a few animals--a rabbit, deer, and squirrel. I have come close to eliminating a few skunks, but, thus far, I've avoided that particular species, thank goodness.
Recently, I've noticed a plague on roadkill deer on the highway as I drive to and from work. When the weather warms up, the deer start moving. Happens every year. Eventually, as the summer progresses, deer are replaced by skunks and raccoons as the most common victims of animal vehicular homicide in the U.P. When major highways are bordered by forests, roadkill happens. Period.
Don't worry. I'm not going to post a picture of the bloated deer carcass I've passed every day this week. I'm dark, but not that dark. When you hit any kind of animal with your vehicle, there will be damage. Sometimes major damage, depending on the size of the creature.
I once owned a Mercury Sable. It was dependable and in really good shape, even with over 100,000 miles on it. The week after I made the last payment on that car, I was driving to work at around 5:30 a.m. It was late June/early July, and the sun still hadn't made an appearance. I was listening to a CD (this was before Bluetooth was a thing). I never even saw the deer bounding across the highway.
My headlights caught a flash of brown, followed by the impact. The Sable jerked, crunched, and then sputtered. It happened so fast, I didn't have time to react. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the side of the road with my car's engine in a death rattle.
Within a minute or so, there was a Michigan State Police cruiser behind me, its lights flashing. The officer got out of the car, approached the driver's side window, which I rolled down.
"Are you okay?" the trooper asked.
"Yes," I replied, sounding a little more confident than I actually felt. My hands were still shaking.
"Do you know if the deer is dead?"
I looked up at the trooper. "No," I said, "but if it isn't, let me know. I'll back up and run over it again." I noticed the trooper's troubled expression. "I'm sorry," I sighed. "I just paid this car off, and I'm a little pissed."
The trooper nodded. When I handed him my license, registration, and proof of insurance, he said, "As long as you're okay, I'm going to ask you to stay in your car until I check on the animal." This guy thinks I'm batshit crazy, I thought to myself.
The trooper went back to his cruiser and sat in it for a few minutes. Then, he emerged with a flashlight, and I saw him scanning up and down the side of the road, looking for the deer I'd hit.
The deer was nowhere to be seen. Either it was thrown far into the woods by the impact with my Sable, or it wasn't that injured and had continued running. It was g-o-n-e.
The trooper came back to my car and handed me my documents. "Is your car drivable?" he asked. I turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, but sounded like a dying water buffalo. I drove the car slowly up the highway into a parking lot. "I'll call you a tow truck," the trooper said.
Within a half hour, the tow truck came and hauled my Sable away. My dad came to pick me up and drive me to work. Later that day, I found out that the car was totaled. It was a shitty day, all 'round. So, what did I do? My wife and I went to Red Lobster for dinner. I ordered four gin and tonics, and, when the server brought my meal, I asked him to box it up for me to take home.
Within a week, I was driving a new car. A Ford Freestyle. Another great vehicle.
However, for the rest of the summer and well into the autumn, I kept on seeing shadow deer on the sides of roads. If I was driving late at night or early in the morning, I swear brown ghosts were jumping in and out of my headlights. Perhaps I was suffering from a little PTSD. Or maybe the spirit of the deer I struck that summer was haunting me. Punishing me for its untimely death.
I still am hypervigilant when I am driving through particularly remote areas, surrounded by a lot of fields or trees. I have just enough memory of that lightning bolt of brown in my headlights to be cautious.
One morning, several years later, I was again driving to work early in the morning. This time, it was late fall. The heavens were filled with stars and moonlight. As I came around a bend in the highway, I saw a deer not 20 feet ahead of me, standing directly in the middle of the road. I slammed on my breaks and heard them scream against the asphalt. My car came to a stop about five feet from the deer.
And the deer just stood there. It didn't move or twitch. In fact, it seemed hardly spooked at all. It just stared at me, as if it somehow recognized who I was. I sat in my car, wondering if the creature was going to charge at me. After what seemed like an hour, the deer slowly trotted off the road and into the trees. Its white tale bobbed into the darkness like a will-o'-the-wisp. And then it was gone.
It wasn't the same deer I hit years earlier. That was impossible. But that animal wasn't afraid of me or my car. In fact, it seemed somehow to recognize me and wanted to give me enough time to observe its swan neck, sleek torso, and elegant flanks. It was beautiful, whether it was from this world or the next.
And that is Saint Marty's roadkill ghost story.
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