Bing: When I was a teenager my cat would stretch up and jiggle the thumb latch type front door handle when it wanted in. My old cat which died in 2007 at 16 1/2 years old lived for 11 years with a 120 pound German Shepard. It had no fear of dogs which thoroughly confused them. It was easy to imagine what dogs were thinking. " What’s wrong with you stupid cat? Run! Run! Run"!
This happened to me today. Mini-road trip. On I-95 between D.C. and Richmond, VA. You know those gravel cut-throughs on the interstates “For Authorized Vehicles Only”? 3 or 4 of them I passed had a few deer milling around in there. Thought to myself, Uh-oh, that’s gonna be trouble, 'cause its gonna be after dark when I’m on my return trip. Sure enough, coming back, traffic slowed way down, then, a bunch of plastic car shrapnel in the road, followed by a big bloody deer spread out on the road. About 150 feet away, a small SUV on the shoulder, left front all smashed to hexx, 2 people with flashlights surveying the damage. I bet that SUV will have to be towed, course I drove past it at 20mph in the dark, so can’t be sure. That part of I-95 is very heavily traveled pretty much 24/7, crossing it is pretty much a suicide mission even for a human who knows how to watch for traffic. Its 3 lanes in each direction, I pretty much stayed in the center lane under the theory that if a deer jumped out I’d have additional half-second or so to react, but saw no more deer thankfully. Night driving was a whole lot more fun when I was younger.
Seems to me that over the course of a few thousand years the deer problem should largely solve itself through natural selection. As in, the deer that freeze in the headlights will all get run over and the ones that are smart enough to run back into the woods will survive to reproduce. Of course its more likely that humans will destroy themselves first and the deer and other creatures of the forest will once again have the landscape to themselves.
This part is supposed to be a funny anecdote. As some have pointed out, sarcasm doesn’t always translate well to the printed word: I had to vacate my house for the whole afternoon / evening because today was the day the local urchins go door to door demanding free candy, and I cannot condone that kind of blatant socialism. (Thanks, I’ve been wanting to tell that one all day 
)
We just leave the lights off and that works. We stopped when everyone from around town was driving their kids into our neighborhood. At any rate I had this image of a deer with a cell phone plastered to his ear crossing the road without paying attention. I should have been a cartoonist but I can’t draw so just have to settle for the image in my mind.
They’re closing the nature center here for a day to thin out the herd. No guns though, just bows so that’s no fun and I wasn’t invited. I heard in Florida they went on a bear hunt and got close to 300 of them. A deer is one thing but meeting a bear on a lonely road at night would be something else, and likely not dead, just mad. I used to spend a lot of time in the woods but I was usually armed.
“I cannot condone that kind of blatant socialism.”
Additionally, because they were all masked and some of them were carrying what may have been guns, they are obviously criminals–in addition to being avowed socialists.
I believe in Stand Your Ground, so they are very lucky that my gun jammed.
Thank God that I wasn’t killed by these marauding young criminalistic socialists!
;-))
(Just to keep this on an automotive theme, it appeared that the vehicle of choice for the mothers who drove these young socialists from house to house was the large Infiniti SUV.)
I was sent to the basement with our little goblin and didn’t see any of the visitors. Our beast is too high strung and would have barked and carried on too much to keep her upstairs. My wife works at a neighborhood preschool, and I know she very much wanted to greet her little monsters from school.
VDCdriver: In December 1994 we moved. It was our first experience living in a semi (barely) affluent neighborhood. The first thing we found was that it was a who can exceed the other idiots in Christmas (and other holiday) decorating. We were treated to 3 weeks of bumper to bumper gawkers plus tour busses and even horse drawn carriages complete with the inevitable horse pollution. The next year Halloween arrived. The formations of a dozen mini-vans reminded me of Huey Helicopter air assaults. They came in fast, came to a sudden stop, doors slid open, and the kids poured out. I had treats for 400 that was gone in less than an hour!.
They destroyed my parent’s landscaping. I hit one as a kid and it damaged the car I was in and shattered the windshield. Lucky not to be injured. Hit 2 at once with a truck. One of them almost landed in my lap. Tough to watch them both scamper off into farm fields bleeding, crying out in pain, with broken hind legs. WW3 hit one with her Prius. Six thousand bucks. Hit one with the Town Car and it didn’t make a dent in the front bumper.
About 1969 coming out of Sioux Falls I ran into a herd of them crossing the interstate. I think I only hit one of them though and he was in the ditch on the side of the road still moving around. He’d tried to jump over me and didn’t make it. Just the windshield and the side. Worse thing was it was my mom’s new car and she was not pleased when I got home.
Seeing the critter still moving around, the highway patrolman pulled his hand gun and blam, dropped him but then he got up again and blam again. This time he didn’t get up. I don’t know what he had, a 45 or a 38 but it was loud and scared the the heck out of me. He was a very good shot so don’t fool with the South Dakota patrol. He could do a head shot at 10 yards one handed so had some practice.