Car wreck with a deer. Got there and saw an old pickup parked on the shoulder. The deer was still alive but badly injured. Seeing an animal in pain is just horrible. The poor deer couldn't even stand up. It tried, but it's broken body was nothing more than dead weight. A few moments after I got there it just laid it's head down, waiting for the inevitable. I couldn't help but wonder: if a deer realizes it's going to die and looks completely defeated, what must that feel like for a human being?
So I stopped traffic on the highway, praying to God that none of the headlights had any small children behind them. I walked up close to the deer. It looked at me, then looked blankly off into nothing. There was no flight or fight response, just the assumption that I was a predator and it's time was up.
A single shot rang out in the night. The deer did that awful twitchy thing for a few seconds, and then I let traffic go. While waiting for the wrecker to get there I remembered that a person had been killed very near this same spot only a few weeks ago. My imagination flared up and I immediately had thoughts of a ghost possessing deer to run out into the road in front of oncoming traffic.
Great, I shot the ghost's deer.
The driver's son showed up to give him a ride home, as his truck's radiator was trashed. The son took a moment to walk over and have a look at the deer. He was a hunter, and mentioned that the deer would be no good to eat because of the wreck.
Don't taunt the deer ghost dude. Not cool.
A few hours later I was on the interstate running the laser, looking more for people going 20 under (likely DUI) than actual speeders. The headlights all blur together after a while, and real speeders aren't as common as you might think. The vast majority of cars on the highway are going between 10 and 15 over, which is not enough to get my attention. I was out there for about an hour and had only gotten one, and I had a growing need to get to a bathroom. Stupid free fountain drinks for cops. Suddenly I noticed one set of headlights was moving a hell of a lot faster than all the other headlights. In the maybe half second it took to bring up and aim the laser I realized those headlights were going really, really fast.
106 in the laser display. 65 on the speed limit sign.
The car blew past me without hitting the brakes. I slammed my Crown Vic into gear and punched it, kicking up dirt and gravel on the side of the road. I floored the gas pedal. 70. 80. 90. The speeder, a Honda, didn't seem to be getting much closer. At 115 I hit the blue lights and flipped the siren on. I was still about 500 feet behind the Honda, but slowly gaining. This was the moment of truth. The Honda had barely slowed, if at all, from when he first shot by me. I wasn't entirely sure if this was a pursuit or if the driver was waiting to see if I was willing to work to get him.
A few seconds after the blue lights lit up the highway I saw the Honda brake and begin moving to the right. Thank God. We pulled over onto the right shoulder a full 2 miles from where I had been sitting. My hands shook just a little bit as I put it back into park. Going from sitting in one spot bored half to death for an hour to suddenly racing down the highway at breakneck speed plays absolute hell with your nerves.
The driver hung both hands, one clutching his driver's license, out the window of his car. I walked up and aimed my flashlight into his car. The driver briefly looked up at me with sad eyes, and then dropped his head down to his chest. He looked exactly like that deer.
Finally, a couple hours later, I was in the mood for another free fountain drink. I bounced into my favorite gas station just after 4 AM. I walked through the door and, like most cops, took just a moment to note my surroundings. There was my buddy the clerk behind the counter, and a woman walking down one of the aisles towards me. I began telling the clerk the tale of my 106'er on the interstate as the woman passed by me. My voice may have faltered when she did. The woman from the front appeared to be dressed normally. When she walked by me it was revealed that there were no backs to her... um... I guess you might call them pants. Where the back of her pants was supposed to be was instead a very thin and completely transparent mesh of sorts. There was a piece of fabric in an inverted V shape that covered her BoomBadaHeyHey. So basically it was legs and ass cheeks walking through a gas station at 4 in the morning.
As a happily married man who tries very hard to be a gentleman, I took the high road and hid in the corner until she left. It's only a few degrees above freezing outside tonight, so I mentally willed the clerk behind the counter to ask her the question burning in my mind: aren't you cold?
I got back to my car just in time to see the poor girl drive off down the highway... right towards ghost deer.
May God have mercy on her
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