The Revenge Deer Cometh!
This is crazy.
I was riding my bicycle home from the County Jail last night. Nothing major. I do it quite a bit, actually. I'm a jail chaplain, and I'm out there twice a week, and I often ride my bike out there on accounta' I need to lose weight. But I digress.
It was around midnight, and my headlight and tail light were both on as I took the bike trail home. For those who don't know, I usually come from the White County Law Enforcement Center where the jail is housed down Queensway to just past the gymnastics place on the right. The entrance to the bike trail is really close by.
I made my right hand turn and realized exactly how dark it is when there are no street lights.
Really dark.
There's somewhat of a long bend to the left after a couple of early turns in both directions. This is where the deer hit me and I went horizontal. Of course, I had no idea that it was a deer. All I knew was that something heavy had hit me and my bike frame at the same time from the left. I was conscious of the fact that I should've hit the ground immediately, but something was keeping me from hitting the ground. As I look back on it, the deer was supporting all of my weight for a short distance. Ride 'em, cowboy! Yee, haw!!!!!!
Then I hit the ground. Hard.
My knuckles curled under the handlebars, and my shoulder hit the pavement while I skidded toward the dirt. When I came to a stop, whatever it was that had been under me wasn't there anymore, and I was curled up over the handlebars with my feet just under the seat.
I looked up to my left, and there was a short period of scuffling (I imagine this was the deer getting to its feet), and then the deer and I were looking each other dead in the face. I'm pretty sure it was laughing at me, having gained revenge on a 12 year old offense—my first deer hunt back in about 1997 or so. It stayed there for about maybe a second and a half and ran off the trail in front of me and to my right.
I extricated myself from the bicycle mess and stood up, carefully taking inventory of my prized extremities that had inadvertently been ground into pastrami upon landing. Just a li'l bit of road rash, bruises and oozing skin. No biggie. The bike was fine—just a bit of straightening the gooseneck and the seat was in order. I was worried about my iPod Classic Video that was clipped to my backpack strap on the same shoulder that I landed on—I've had to fix a shattered screen on it before—but it was none the worse for wear.
As I got back on the bike with slightly elevated respiration and blood pressure, I thought back on the deer's assassination attempt with a bit of sarcasm. No, really. Anything worth doing is worth doing sarcastically. I thought that this deer could bring back my Oakland Raiders' playoff hopes by being hired on as the tackling coach. Maybe playing at Linebacker or Strong Safety.
Oh yeah, this deer is gonna' be an NFL tackling coach. Perfect pursuit angle. Perfect form tackling. Perfect hitting motion. Perfect blind side anticipation.
Come to think of it, I'm calling Al Davis right now...
---Jeff
