Oh, Deer!

December 7, 2021

We are OK.

Our Honda CR-V, the Spaceship Car, is not.

Before I go any further, I feel the need to get a few facts out of the way. First, I do not like hunting. I have nothing against it–I just take Ron White’s attitude toward it: “It’s dark, it’s cold, and I don’t wanna go.” I never enjoyed hunting with my dad, whose idea of fun was to traipse around the woods and essentially accomplish nothing. And the idea of stalking or waiting for a deer or whatever is mind-numbingly boring to me.

Which is why I appreciate hunters. I’m more than happy that others go out and kill deer. Some of you are probably wondering what I have against these gentle, beautiful woodland creatures, made by God to grace our lands with Peace, Joy, and Wholesomeness. People living in or near the country understand the reality, which is that deer are dangerous, destructive vermin. There are far too many of them in these parts. Humans have removed nearly all of their predators and have provided them with habitats and protections in which they thrive. We have created a monster.

At approximately 7:30 PM on TX-75, as we were headed home from Madisonville, Texas, a white tail buck decided it would be a good idea to leap in front of the Spaceship Car mere feet ahead of us. Any of you who have hit (or more properly, “have been hit”) by a deer will understand what a surprising, frightening, and overall disturbing event this can be. They seem to appear out of nowhere, despite any effort to be cautious and observant, and even at low speeds can cause significant damage. Many people are seriously injured or killed when they attempt to swerve to miss them, or when they lose control of their vehicle due to the effect of the impact. I won’t go into the gory details of what exactly happened, but it left a deep impression on Kristi and me.

What is worse is that Kristi suffers from PTSD from the crash in which our little Patrick was killed. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can cause the body to enter into a defense mode that can manifest itself in many ways, including going into a fight-or-flight mode where an individual may temporarily lose conscious control of themselves. This can be very dangerous in a situation where the person experiencing it is driving a vehicle, as Kristi was when we hit the deer. But despite how it affected her in the moment she was able to maintain control and pull over into the entrance of a neighborhood, where I got out and inspected the damage.

Most of the damage was superficial. Automobiles these days are designed to absorb and disperse the energy from impacts to protect the occupants. (This seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but the big, heavy, steel vehicles of old were actually VERY unsafe in a collision. The car might have been salvageable, but the occupants too often did not survive.) The grill was completely destroyed. The hood and the front end were dented, and some parts were broken. There was a small leak of engine coolant. We were, however, able to drive the rest of the way home.

Kristi actually drove us home. I know it must have been difficult, but she insisted because she knew that if she didn’t, that she might not be able to work up the courage to drive for a while. I am so proud of her!

An insurance claim has been filed. As long as they don’t total it, I expect we will be sending it to a local body shop very soon. Hopefully they can get the parts in a timely fashion and we will have the Spaceship Car back on the road before Christmas; but considering the current shortage of parts and delivery delays, all bets are off.

Now that we currently do not have a backup vehicle, we need to take extra precautions to help ensure that nothing takes the truck out of service. As a result, we will be putting our adventures on pause until the Spaceship Car is operational again.

But I don’t plan to cease blogging in the meantime. I have a lot that I want to share about other trips we have taken and places that we have visited. Writing these posts has forced me to go through my photo archive, which has refreshed my memory of some of our past adventures.

Topics that I plan to cover in the near future include our visits to one of our most favorite places, the Lindsay Ranch, which is owned by one of our most favorite people, Deloris Lindsay. We also have a ton of photos from Matagorda Beach, a few photos of more courthouses we’ve visited, and I really want to write up something about our visit to Newman’s Castle.

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If you thought I was going to skip any discussion of the name, “Spaceship Car,” then you were wrong!

We purchased our Honda CR-V shortly after the wreck that killed Patrick. It was a difficult thing to do considering the circumstances, but we really needed another vehicle and Kristi really needed to “get back in the saddle,” so to speak. She did a lot of research for a safe vehicle that would meet our needs, and the CR-V was about as perfect a match as there could be. It has a lot of high-tech safety technology, including lane-keeping assist, adaptive cruise control, blind spot alerts, and collision avoidance (not sure whether this helped with the deer, though). Aside from all of that, it has a number of nice luxury features. When we test drove it, I told Kristi that it was like a spaceship from the future, hence the name, Spaceship Car.

And considering the size of that buck and what all happened immediately after the impact, I think that title is fitting. Well done, Honda.