Oh Deer, What is that Smell?

Wyoming is an old Indian term that means, “Place you go through to get somewhere else”. Seriously, my experience with Wyoming is lots of wind, sagebrush, blowing snow, more wind, and brown nothingness as far as the eye can see. I have spoken to people who say that hidden pockets, far from Interstate 80, actually contain elements of green and a certain rugged beauty but I haven’t seen it. And I have driven through Wy. often.

I live in Utah – Indian definition, “Place people go through to get to slot machines”, which has bunches of green, due, in large part, to industrious forefathers (in Utah shouldn’t it be fourmothers?) who irrigated and made the place bloom “as a rose”. I used to live in one of the thorns, but that is another story.

My daughter, affectionately known as Noodle, went to Western Wy. Community College in Rock Springs (saw lots of rocks, not so many springs) because they have a killer Musical Theatre Department. (Did you notice that I put the e at the end of theater which is how you spell it when you want to be all that.) Attempting to get a Musical Theater degree means that you go to school for two years and are in lots of plays and pretty much don’t take, or pass, any others classes because you are having such fun staying up until 2:00 a.m. rehearsing, so at the end of your two years you are no further ahead in school than when you started, but boy did you have fun, and now what do you want to be when you grow up?

But having her in said plays meant that I, being a dutiful mother, made the long and boooorrrriiiinnnngggg drive to Rock Springs on a regular basis. Did I mention that there is a lot of wind? Anyhow, I took my sister Kissy and three or four of our younger issue (the technical term my children use for themselves) and made the interminable drive to be highly entertained due to many late night rehearsals and missed math classes. And then, at about 11:00 p.m. we started for home.

If you live in the west you know that the very long and lonely highways suggest 75 mph. But when you can drive for 20 minutes and not see another soul, the 75 sort of morphs into something a little more reasonable, given the circumstances, so I had morphed close to 90 when we rounded a long slow curve and saw…..a deer carcass. Not just any carcass, but a bloated, ready to explode carcass. Note to the uninformed – road kill, if it has an intact inside, fills with gasses and swells until – you get the picture. Anyway, it was right at that point when we came upon it.

When you are driving fast, even a little swerve can flip a car, and I needed a big swerve to miss the darling, and so I yelled, feeling not a little like Bill Paxton in Twister, “We’re going through!” Seriously – some people think of their family when they are going to die – I think of movie quotes. Anyhow, I ran right over the thing. Sickening bump, splatter to both sides and I saw the head and assorted torso pieces slide off to the left. At the same time Kissy yelled, “There goes a leg”. I think we left the other legs in the road for the next unsuspecting motorist.

All the kids awoke and began screaming as I brought the car to a gradual stop and got out to assess the damage. I got right back in. Kissy said, “What’s that smell?” and the kids began to gag. I didn’t care if my engine was hanging by a rubber hose or the muffler dragged along behind us, we had to escape the hell smell that was now permeating the car. Running over a skunk is gross, been there, done that, but skunks are small and stay mostly and politely on the tires. I, however, had been exploded on by a rotting deer bomb. I couldn’t drive fast enough to escape it.

We made it home, dropped off the sis and left the car OUT of the garage. The next day, while holding my nose, I surveyed the damage. The car was covered, doors, windows, trunk, in deer hair and flesh (yucky word – should be banned). 3 undercarriage washes at Super Sonic rid it of a lot of the ooziness, but the deer had flung pieces of itself into my engine cavity and my mechanic said it would just have to rot away over the course of the next year. Are you serious? He was. All winter, whenever I turned on the engine, more than the car would heat up and rolling down the windows did NOT help. Summer was the worst. I parked far away from people, walked lots more than usual and endured to the end. I had just got rid of the smell when the entire electrical system went caput. The mechanic said, “it look like you ran over something”. No duh!