On opening day of deer season I drive over the Medicine Bows, giving the two-fingered wave to all the men in orange hats in their farm trucks. With a roaring wildfire to the southwest and camouflaged men behind every willow bush, I’m one of the few non-hunters venturing into the mountains at this early hour. I follow another graduate student, Katrina, who drives ahead of me in her university truck as we head to her field research site.
I fiddle with the radio as we wind over the mountain pass at nearly 11,000 feet and back down the other side. Every station is static. Aspens and willows lining the road have already peaked in their fall colors; the dropping leaves make yellow and orange confetti in the breeze.
The vehicles ahead swerve around a dead deer in the middle of the right lane. When I drive past I notice that the deer is alive. Her head is up, huge ears twitching, eyes rolling. She is small, only a fawn of this year, sitting with her legs under her like she’s chosen a poor spot to relax in the sunshine.
Katrina is driving ahead. We have a long day of work to do. No time to stop.
I brake and pull over to the shoulder without conscious decision. Ahead of me, Katrina does the same. I get out of my car and look at the deer still sitting in the road. Another truck comes charging down the hill at full speed. I wave a signal to the truck to slow down; it doesn’t, but it swerves aside at the last moment. The fawn panics and runs, or tries to. Her back legs flop sickeningly and she skids around in a circle. I can see her confusion, not understanding why her legs are not carrying her in graceful bounds over the tundra.
Katrina comes up beside me. My mind is filled with the radio static and I can’t think of anything helpful. I don’t have a gun or a deer tag. Katrina is already in action, busily working the phone in her hands. She has a different carrier and somehow has reception here.
“I don’t have anything to put it down with,” I say. Neither of us needs to say it; a deer without working legs won’t survive.
More trucks drive by but none stop. Katrina calls local Game and Fish offices but no one picks up this early in the morning, and not on opening day.
The young deer struggles again and manages to hop off the road, but her broken legs frighten her and she spins in terrible circles and flails as if trying to free herself from an invisible predator. Katrina chokes up during her next call to her husband for advice. We are biologists and not new to the death of wildlife, but the tears come anyway.
An adult mule deer, a doe, comes tentatively stepping across the highway. The injured fawn squeals at her, but the mother is wiser to the dangers of the road and does not linger there. I don’t see her again, but I continue to hear her galloping back and forth in the trees.
A truck actually slows down and stops; the first one since the accident. Four orange-capped heads come leaning our way.
“Do you have a deer tag?” Katrina asks. Eager nods.
“Doe or fawn?” I ask. Their faces drop.
“There’s a warden just up there; we’ll let’em know,” the driver says, and then they are gone.
The baby has disappeared into the trees and is quiet for a while. Katrina and I wait by the roadside. We can’t leave until the warden comes, and part of this is because we want to show them where the deer is; the faster they are able to find the deer and give her a merciful end, the better. Another part is that we just somehow can’t leave. The world keeps driving on by and seems not to see, and what humans don’t see doesn’t count.
I think about the driver who hit the deer. They would have known that the deer was not dead. Why did they keep going?
The answer is probably obvious. Because they didn’t want to stop. Stopping was harder than accelerating and putting miles between themselves and that deer. I know if I had kept driving, I would have been sad about the injured animal. Sitting here and bearing witness, hearing the deer bawl for its mother as we all do at our worst moments, is something different.
I wonder, would the driver have stopped for the fawn if they lived nearby? If they could not hurry away and put miles and physical and emotional distance between them. I don’t know.
The promised game warden does not come, and Katrina decides to go find help. She drives away and then I’m alone there, kneeling on the spongy ground and waiting for a familiar green truck to come around the bend.
The fawn comes flopping out of the trees every few minutes. Every time something painful clenches in my chest. She doesn’t know that I’m here, and I’m not providing her any comfort, but I tell myself it’s better somehow than everyone driving by insensible to her, going on pretending that living our normal lives doesn’t have consequences.
Several years ago, I hit a mule deer with my truck on this very same road. That doe was already dead by the time I got out to look, and I remember being grateful. Of course it was an accident. The doe stepped out and there was no time to react. But I made many decisions that stacked up together and finally led to that moment. When we make decisions, we like to think they only affect us. I take care of mine and you take care of yours and then there is a baby wailing at the side of the road with broken legs.
Everything that has happened since the pandemic began has served us a reminder that we share the same world, the same air, even the same vulnerabilities in our DNA. Being able to mind your own business is the great illusion.
The fawn begins to wail in long, shrill notes. I stand up every time a truck comes around the corner, anxious to be seen. No one stops, which surprises me. When I had a flat tire several years ago on a back road in Wyoming, every farmer that drove by stopped and asked if I needed help, though I wasn’t waving them down. One old timer asked with obvious reluctance and an exasperated sigh. He was busy. He had work to do. No time to stop. But he did.
Truck after truck speeds by until at last a big green one comes around the corner and slows down. Even before a woman in a green jacket steps out and says hello, I feel the burden of responsibility lift. The fawn’s struggle is almost done.
“Can you give me an idea where the deer might be?” she asks. She is younger than I would have expected, but something about her steady gaze speaks of toughness. This is far from the first deer she has put down, but she somehow manages to be gentle about it anyway. It takes strength to not become jaded.
I walk with her a short distance up the road where she can see the fawn thrashing in the trees.
“Looks like a fawn from this year. She’s pretty messed up. I’m going to have to put her down,” the warden says kindly. That was my expectation, but I appreciate her compassion, not knowing my background. “I’ll have to use my gun, so it would be best if you stayed clear for a while.”
I nod again. Now that she is here, I don’t mind leaving anymore. The fawn is in good hands.
I thank her for coming, and then Katrina shows up and we both drive away. After a few minutes I know that it’s over.
The day turns out beautiful and sunny for October. While we work, I keep thinking of the deer stepping softly through the trees in these last days before the snow falls, how the fawn would have been among them.
I think about the person who hit the deer and kept on driving either out of fear, or maybe apathy, and I wish I could tell them that someone stayed and saw it through to the end.