Watch For Deer

I'm sure you all are waiting with baited breath for more Louise stories. Well, I
have some. After our 3 hours of sleep we were on the road heading through Tennessee. It was absolutely beautiful. Louise's brother and his girlfriend got on the road a little later than us and we had so much fun NOT telling him our location. For Louise and I it was "the amazing race." Her brother drives racecars so we were sure he would beat us home. Never the less we were willing to go the distance and give it our best effort. Texting back and forth, never giving our exact location, and torturing him with our progress was our warped idea of fun. The roads we traveled were full of cops. They were everywhere. I had to beg Louise to slow down 'cause I sure didn't want to spend any time in the slammer this trip. We thought we were caught once, but we managed to lose them. Seriously though, Tennessee is absolutely beautiful this time of year. The drive through the mountains was picture perfect. Kentucky was equally as beautiful. We traveled just a little bit through Illinois and then into Missouri. Did you know they have huge deer there? I didn't either, until one decided to run in front of my car. My life flashed before my eyes and my pain and panic word slipped through my lips as we connected with the deers hind quarters. It was quite frightening! The deer kept right on running, in spite of our impact,and we kept right on driving. The shock really set in after it was over. Of course it happened so quickly. I immediately apologized to Louise for my use of a very mild four letter word. Thankfully she forgave me(truth be known, she howled with delight at my use of such slight profanity). We drove on hoping that the huge deer was ok. Shortly after this memorable event Louise texted her husband and he immediately called full of concern. We hadn't even thought to look at the car for damage and so he encouraged us to do so. After a while we found a place to stop and discovered that that deer had broken our headlight and scratched some of the surrounding plastic on the car. For the remainder of the trip I "saw" deer out of the corner of my eye. In case you've never hit a large mammal, I wouldn't reccommend it. I hit an otter once. That was quite an experience, but honestly, I love animals and try to avoid hitting all of them. I think the people up north ought to train their deer to stay off the highways, don't you? If in Florida we can train whales to jump for fish, you'd think they could train some sweet little deer. You know, us southerners are quite resourceful though. Thankfully we made it home without any more horrific experiences and we even beat Louise's racecar driver brother. Not by much of course, but even 5 minutes is a win. Iowa is cold and rainy and Louise's parents' home is livable. It sits on a corner lot with huge trees and my favorite: birds. TONS of them. So, I guess I can manage to stay here. Well, we are off to a baby shower for Louise's sister. Yep, she's pregnant again. Wow, who ever heard of having 4 kids? Guess I better head out in that ratty ole deer hitting car of Louise's dad's. Life here in Iowa is tough. I'm telling ya. TOUGH!