A deer in the headlights

2004-10-17 - 10:13 p.m.

How do you tell a car you're grateful for all its years of service? How do you tell a car you're sorry for the way it all ended? How do you tell a car thank you for saving your life and those of your family?

Yesterday at 6:50pm, while driving west on Highway 120 about 15-20 miles outside of Yosemite National Park, we hit a deer with our car. This is a two-lane highway at that point and it was dark. My mom was driving, my dad was in the passenger seat, and I was in the backseat on the passenger side. My parents didn't see the deer until we were practically on top of it. There was enough time for my dad to shout, "Watch--," for my mom to veer to the right, and for me to glimpse brown fur, before I heard the thump. We almost missed it, but not quite.

My mom steered back towards the center of our lane, but hitting the deer must've done something to the front left tire because she just couldn't ever seem to regain control of the car. We swerved right over the white line before swinging around and heading left again towards the double yellow line. Without crossing the double yellow line we swung back to the right and this time went all the way off the road into the dirt. This side of the road sloped uphill and it felt like as we were going to be back in control again but suddenly the car pulled hard to the left. We zoomed all the way across to the opposite shoulder. Apparently sitting in the backseat saved me a considerable amount of fright at this point because I couldn't see as my parents could that we were headed straight for a drop off. My dad said looking straight ahead all he could see were treetops. But while we were still on the pavement of the left shoulder the back of the car swung around to the left so that we were once again pointed towards the middle of the road. There was an eight-inch curb on the edge of the asphalt, though, and when the back left wheel hit that while we were practically going sideways, it was enough to roll us. After getting out and looking, I was able to tell that we'd only rolled once. We landed on our wheels, no one hurt. In the picture above you can see where we hit the curb and the groove our roof rack cut into the dirt while we were upside down.

Here's my lovely MS Paint rendition of our crash course. The double yellow lines being just that, the black lines being the edge of the lanes and the blue lines being the edge of the pavement. The brown thing with the red X on its butt is the deer, the green line is our course, and the pickle is our car. Thank God there were no other cars on the road with us at the moment.

When my parents first spotted the deer and started to react I was scared. But for some reason, as things started to happen, I wasn't scared at all. I had this weird feeling of detachment like things were going to happen no matter what I did, so best to just hold tight and wait until it's all over and then perhaps I can do something that makes a difference. The whole thing happened in slow motion (although my mom doesn't agree with me on that point). As it became obvious that the car was going to roll I closed my eyes and my only thought was to keep my mouth shut. Which is funny because my first thought after it happened was about how I had dirt in my teeth. Then I had to wait for my head to stop spinning before I could focus my eyes. My parents seemed to be fine, although my mom was really shaken up.

Before the accident, we had a bunch of our stuff (coats, snacks, books, purses, sunglassess, etc.) piled on the backseat beside me. Afterwards, when I looked around me, the only thing on the seat was my mom's camera. On the floor at my feet was six cents (I still have no idea where that came from) and a white piece of plastic I later figured out to be the dome light. I glanced to my right and saw that my window was gone. About a foot from the car, as though I'd reached my hand out the window and dropped it there, lay my purse. My door wouldn't open so I climbed out the window. I found my book wrapped in my window about ten feet from the car (bottom right corner in the picture below).

In the next picture, if you look closely you can see deer fur stuck to the bumper. And it becomes pretty obvious why the car was so hard to control.

My cell phone didn't get any signal from there and it seemed like it took forever before anyone stopped to help us. But once one person did, it seemed like nearly every one did. And nobody had a signal on their cell phone. Finally someone came who said he lived two miles up the road and he would go call the CHP from his house. Everyone left except one couple who stayed, the woman saying comforting things to my mom and the man helping my dad tell people that nobody was hurt and help was on the way, thank you.

Finally the CHP officer arrived. He wrote down our story, looked around with his flashlight, and then walked up the road with my dad and I to find the dead deer to back up our story. My mom kept saying how the deer was the size of a bear and how we'd hit it about five miles up the road before we finally came to a stop. But I saw the deer. She was average to small (her body was about four feet long) and she was only 100 yards or so up the road (a pretty long walk along the side of a freeway in the dark, but not so far at all driving). He called a tow truck and an hour and a half after the whole mess started, we were back on our way down the road. In the cab of a tow truck.

The closest town was a small town called Groveland. There was no cell phone service in Groveland either. We had to wait until the car was unloaded at the garage before the tow truck driver would give us a lift to wherever we wanted to be dropped off. The next closest town was 30 miles down a very steep and windy road and home was 200 miles away. We needed to find somewhere with a phone so we could call someone to give us a ride. The tow truck driver informed us that since it was Saturday night, the only establishment in the whole town that was open was the Iron Door Saloon and since Eddie Money was performing there that night, there would be a $30 cover charge. We decided to just get a hotel room instead. There are three hotels in Groveland. Only one had vacancy. But what we ended up with wasn't even a room. It was a trailer. According to my parents it was a 1940's era Airstream. I thought it was a tin can. And it didn't come with a phone. We ended up using the phone in the motel lobby but we weren't able to get ahold of anyone. We decided to just spend the night since it was already late and Groveland was about two hours from the closest person we could think of. But we hadn't packed for spending the night. So we slept in our clothes and didn't brush our teeth. The trailer had a window that wouldn't shut, no heater, a bathroom with nothing more than a curtain to separate it from the rest of the trailer, a leaky roof (did I mention the fact that it rained last night, too?), and a light with a motion detector that would turn on every time a car went by on the highway.

OK, it's nearly midnight and I'm really tired so I'm headed to bed. The dramatic conclusion to this story tomorrow!