Flying Deer

Today started like any other day on the road for work.

Some of you know my job often has me driving all over the Northwestern part of the United States, through the mountains and valleys, near the lakes and the streams.

When I began this day, I never would have thought that I would have seen something that I had never seen before, and will more then likely never see again. I saw a flying deer.

No, this is not an article about Santa’s reindeer, nor is it fictional. For those of you who now doubt my word, I can offer my friend who was traveling with me at the time as proof. He witnessed this event as well. It was a spectacle that left us both gasping in disbelief.

Okay, enough misdirection. As you may have guessed by now, the deer was flying because it was struck by a car.

While heading from the Canadian border toward the little town of Curlew Washington, we were following a car and as we rounded a corner we saw something fly up and over the car and land on the opposite side of the road.

I’ll spare you more details of the incident, because it is obviously a sad thing to watch occur.

We stopped to check and see if the family that was in the car was alright. Luckily, nobody was injured but they were understandably shaken up a bit.

Heading closer to home we entered the blast zone of high winds (apparently about 70 mph). Visibility was low due to the amount of dirt in the air, and the wind apparently snapped and toppled trees, sparked fires, downed power lines and just generally created havoc throughout the Spokane Washington area.

We were fortunate that it seems all of our trees have survived the storm intact, and the trash cans were not yet placed outside for their Tuesday morning pickup.

Tonight we’re surrounded by strong winds, lightening, and rain. We went from 95 degrees to 71 degrees as I write this (11:30PM).

There are times we go about our daily lives ignoring nature, and then there are days like today were nature pops up and demands to be acknowledged.

As my daughter and I brought in the cushions from our patio furniture, I noticed that the back of the house is covered with a variety of spiders. We have been doing battle with spiders in the house too. We now have 10 spider traps placed throughout the bottom two floors of our home.

There is nothing more unnerving then watching a quarter-sized spider cruise across your floor while you’re watching television. While smacking one of these big brutes the other night as he crawled along my fireplace brickwork, he jumped on my hand and ran up my arm before he fell on the carpet. I am not normally afraid of spiders, but that gave me the heebie jeebies!

With the storm, fires, power outages, and spiders, it seems only natural that this day also included a flying deer. This night I will pay tribute to Mother Nature. Today I was reminded that we are not the rulers of the Earth; we are merely living here in concert with a variety of other creatures.