Deer Jumped Over My Truck

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
A deer jumped over my truck,
My wife smiled as she heard my report
That the doe ran away to her buck.

Yes, a deer tried to jump over my Tacoma pickup Sunday morning while I was driving to town. The doe’s gymnastic effort was so sudden and fast that I recall only a brown, furry blur about a foot from my driver’s side window and then the sound of deer meeting silvery Toyota metal just to the left and above my head.

I reacted instinctively. My hands squeezed the steering wheel, involuntarily blowing the horn. I jammed on the brakes, though I was probably going 30 mph or less because I was approaching a stop sign. I turned off the engine and stepped out expecting to see major damage to my truck and a dead deer.

Roadside honeysuckle vines were shaking violently—deer death throes, I thought. I noticed no damage to my truck. The doe had almost cleared the top of the cab, which is 67” high. The honeysuckle stopped shaking, and the doe’s white tail marked her route as she bounded across the adjacent field.

When I got home, I asked Ellen to check out my “souvenirs”—some gobs of deer saliva on my left truck window, just above a muddy smear—and four or five deer hairs where the window joins its frame. It reminded her of when a deer once took out the left side of her Volkswagen Jetta. Later, Deena, our visiting daughter-in-law, noticed two, 3” oval indentations, barely visible, on the edge of the door and the metal support behind the driver’s window—not significant damage on a 9-year-old pickup.

Since the collision, I’ve been wondering whether the doe was fleeing a buck in the annual deer ritual called “rut.” I think not. Tomorrow I’ll post a link to a short article that will make you an expert on “rut.”

All’s well that ended well in this encounter.

I wasn’t injured. My Tacoma wasn’t seriously damaged. And the doe ran away across the field.