I Killed Bambie's Sweet Loving Mother

So my wife sez that I left out a lot of fun details
on that deer hit post. I am normally a long winded sort,
and don't want to be here, so I try to keep it all short.
Maybe I shouldn't care, what with this being for me more
than anyone else.

So I'm tooling along Sunday morning in fine fettle.
Not really paying attention to the slowspeed-ometer, but
only hustling a little as we were just 6 minutes behind
schedule, a near record for our always late selves.

And then there's a deer bolting out from the woodline on
the right, running full tilt across the road in front of us.
My first reaction would normally have been to try and steer
around it, since it was moving quick. But there was an
embankment on my right with very little shoulder.
Too much chance of oversteering (I tend to overdo things)
and bump the embankment.

Of course, I barely touched the brake when the van
slammed into Bambie's mom.

I just caught a flash of brown and a thud at my side
window and pulled over. All was quiet for a moment
and then my 10yr old sitting behind me said "there's
spit on the window" in a very tight, teary voice.

Sure enough, Bambie's mama had gone into a spin,
whomping her head on the side window before arcing
off like a cow in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In her last act of defiance, she spit and blew snot
all over the window. She also got the door handle a
bit, but I didn't find that out until later.

I got out and took a look at the damage, didn't look
like more than some little dings and cracks and the
headlights still worked. I figured if we didn't fix
the cosmetics, it would come in under our deductible
and we had to get to that competition. I told my wife
not to bother reporting it, but she already had and
now we were to wait for the cop to come and get a report.
Well, Hell's Bell's now we're gonna miss it.

Then I realized that I didn't see the deer anywhere.
Turns out it had flown right over to an adjacent road
and skidded into the middle of it!

Well, back into the van, turn it around and park on the
opposite side of the road, closer to the deer carcass,
as a courtesy to the cop.

Good fortune was with us, other than hitting a deer
when in a hurry to get somewhere, as one of the other
parents hadn't left yet. He stopped by and picked up
my assistant coach wife and our little competitor.
My older daughter and I stayed with the van waiting for the cop.

The corpse of Bambie's mother was in plain sight right
behind his truck, so I had to get out and have her look
down and cover her eyes while I guided her to the door.
She was a wreck - uh bad choice of words - she was most
distraught. We were all very worried that she  would be
too unhinged to compete well, but as I mentioned before,
she did fine.

Remember when I wrote about two paragraphs back that
there wasn't much damage? Well, when I opened the door
to help my little one, it noisily rubbed against something
and was a bit hard to open.

WTF?

Upon returning to the van, I saw that the fender was butt
up against the door... and there was a huge gap between the
fender and the hood!
I swear it wasn't like that when I first got out to look.
It's like the fender said to itself "hold on, don't move,
it's not that bad, you can take it - gaaaaaahhh, I'm losing
it, creeeeeaaaaaak..."
I think driving the van around to the other side and off
the road twisted things a little to the point that they let go.

Daughter says "At least the deer died quick." Not a minute later,
I see momma lift her head and flop around. Stopped before the
cop got there.

Cop arrives, nice guy, takes the papers and my statement and
starts writing up the report.
Daughter says "what's that awful smell?"
Well crap it's anti-freeze.
And there's steam coming out from the grill.
Go and tell the cop. He's finished writing, but comes out to
the van and says he'll add that to the report.

I swear the van is falling apart right there!
The engine's gonna fall out any second, the tires are
gonna flop off like in a cartoon. It's a slow motion
self destruct. It's not supposed to be this way, it's
supposed to be one big bang and then we're standing around
a steaming pile of what was once a fine vehicle, not this
"I'm OK, uh, well, not so much OK really, uh, that is, I think
I'm dying, you know, yeah, yup, I'm dead, sorry for the delay."

Well, we're close to home, so we say bye and thanks to the cop
and drive home. Van seems OK, but my daughter's shitting
pickles waiting for the thing to blow up.
It doesn't, instead it makes it home fine (as Honda's will do).

So, I park the van at an angle to make it as easy to tow as possible.
Well now my car is loaded with stuff for work. So we unload the
back and passenger seats and head off.

Oldest and I arrive almost an hour late.

Still, a good time was had by all.
Except that now the family is calling me "Uncle Buck."