Roger Pires December 9, 2010
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The buck stops here
From somewhere in the ether, I heard chuckling. Of the “last laugh” variety. And it was aimed at me. How did I become an object of derision from the great beyond? Well, it started on a frozen country road at the height of rush hour. Or at least what passes for rush hour on Highway 48 just south of Bloomington Road.
I was heading home from work, happily cursing the traffic. Suddenly, two beady eyes leered at me, inches from my windshield. A deer had loped from the shadows and right into my old Sunfire. Whatever Kool-Aid they were doling out in the forests of north Stouffville had turned this young buck into a suicidal maniac.
I pulled over to survey the damage. One dead deer. One dead Pontiac. One frenzied call to Roadside Assistance. In the meantime a kind, young lady in a minivan had pulled over to offer assistance. We were lamenting the demise of a majestic animal when tiny hands tugged at her pant leg. Her two kids, one barely out of diapers, had emerged to check things out. They stopped when they saw the deer, steam from its fresh carcass billowing in the cold air. Not good. I could feel one of those parental Death 101 talks coming on. Like the one little Billy gets when he finds the pet parakeet at the bottom of the birdcage, stiff as jailhouse porridge. I envisioned the conversation to go something like this:
Little Billy: What’s wrong with the deer, mommy?
Nervous Mom: He’s sleeping, sweetie.
Little Billy: Why is he sleeping on the side of the road?
Nervous Mom: Um, he has a bad back….
Little Billy: Why isn’t he sleeping in the forest, mommy?
Nervous Mom: Er…uh…the gravel shoulder provides support for his lower lumbar region….
Little Billy: What’s the lower lum….?
Well, you get the picture. To my relief - and considerable surprise - this awkward parent-child moment was averted when the kid pointed at the deer and said, “Is he ours?” Apparently, Dad is a hunter and Little Billy associates the fuzzy ungulates not with Bambi but with Sunday dinner. I watched the brood pull away, watching “A Crossbow Christmas” on the van’s DVD player. Or so it seemed to someone whose universe was unraveling before him.
As they headed out, an OPP cruiser pulled up. After the police reports were filled out, the officer asked if I wanted to keep the deer. At first, I was delirious at the windfall. But visions of venison steak sizzling on the grill were erased by the thought of showing up at my front door with a deer carcass dangling from the back of a tow truck. This image conjured up another, future awkward conversation. This time between husband and wife.
Horror-stricken wife: Where is the car?
Doomed husband: Well hon, I know you’ll just laugh when you hear this….
Horror-stricken wife: And what’s that hanging from the hoist…?!
When she came to, she would present me with either of two options: best case scenario, she gives me thirty seconds to make the deer and the tow truck disappear; worst case, she serves me with divorce papers and I spend the night in the garage with my new best friend.
So, I painfully turned down the offer from the officer. Shortly after, the boys from York Region arrived. I wept openly as they lowered that freezerful of venison onto the bed of the truck and drove away. So there I was – on the side of a dark, frozen stretch of asphalt with nothing to show for my ordeal but a crumpled vehicle and an empty freezer. There must be a support group out there for guys like me.
It should’ve ended there. But as with all great tragedies, there is an aftermath. At first, I thought nothing of the slight pressure in my knee. I went back to the gym, starting skating again, and felt well enough to lug Christmas decorations up from the basement. Sometime between blowing the dust off the Nativity scene and bench-pressing a trunk load of tinsel, I felt a concussion grenade go off in my knee.
The next morning I was floating in a chair for four hours at the “fast track” clinic, doped up on a pint of Tylenol. The presiding medic announced that the x-rays were negative but that I had likely suffered ligament damage. And with an Alfred E. Newman grin she proclaimed, “You’re gonna wish you’d broken it.” On the way to her degree she’d obviously taken Gallows Humour as an elective.
I could hear the snickering all the way from the great salt lick in the sky.
