draliman on life

“Oh deer” – no, not an embarrassing typo. We’re talking Bambi’s here (I understand that “Bambi” is a name and has no plural, and neither “Bambis” nor “Bambies” look right, so I hope you’ll excuse the use of the apostrophe in the plural).

From personal observation there has been a recent spate of attempted animal suicides in my area. Over the last couple of months every kind of furry mammal has flung itself at my car in an apparent attempt to end it all.

A Bambi, much like the suicide Bambi recently spotted on a main road in Cornwall.

Here’s a list of the most recent attempts:

2 cats (Truro and Redruth)
1 fox (A30 dual carriageway)
1 squirrel (Falmouth)
1 deer (A30 dual carriageway)
1 drunken youth (Truro)

All of these incidents took place after 10pm except for the squirrel – he only required a quick braking manoeuvre. The others elicited a last minute swerve.

Now, the fox and the squirrel I can understand – they’ve never traditionally balked at running into the road.

I always thought cats had more sense.

I’ve included “drunken youth” in the list because he was behaving like an animal. He jumped out into he road and stuck his finger up at me. Maybe he was trying to thumb a lift but mistakenly used “the finger” instead. As I passed him I saw him in the rear view mirror move further out into the road, finger still held high as I drove away. I was quite annoyed at such a random incident and briefly considered slamming the car into reverse and backing over him. Of course that would have been “wrong”, although, to be honest, prison food could only improve my diet.

That brings me to the Bambi. A deer in Cornwall? What? I saw it in the headlights at the last second as it calmly made its way down the verge and straight out into the slow lane. I performed a rather impressive 70mph swerve and saw it in the rear view mirror stare at me for a second before, again very calmly, it made its way back up the verge.

My Dad later told me that apparently there’s a “deer farm” in the vicinity (deer don’t generally roam free in Cornwall which is why I was so surprised to see one at all, let alone on the main road).

I’m not sure why one would “farm deer”, but I guess it must have been “deer harvest” time and one of them made a break for freedom.

Apparently hitting a deer at 70mph does serious damage to a car (and it probably doesn’t do the deer much good either) so it’s lucky I had an empty lane to swerve into.

Are these incidents all part of the rich tapestry of nature, or is there a multi-species suicide pact going on? Hopefully the former, otherwise it’s all just a bit depressing.