The CDC says it’s okay to just plow right into the deer!
Since the CDC announced significant changes to the quarantine guidelines on Monday evening, a new meme has spread across the internet, poking fun at the absurdity of the new COVID guidelines. Many in public health, myself included, are shocked on multiple accounts. First, neither local health agencies nor even the state agencies received any kind of advanced notice. We learned about it when the public did. Second, it couldn’t come at a worse time for disease prevention. It wasn’t accompanied by the normal science brief or MMWR article explaining the careful consideration and science behind the decision.
Put simply, it strikes many of us as driven by economics instead of health.
So, this put us all on our heels to begin the week. This was after we tested a record 48 people on Monday at the Health Center. It just felt like we were in Bizzaro-world coming in on Tuesday to this.
My personal journey into the twilight zone continued this morning.
I have been fairly lucky in my driving career. Before today, I have only made contact with one deer with my vehicle, and all it did was run into the side and bounce off, leaving my truck and the deer unharmed. This was about 5 years ago or so. I’ve been seeing several deer all along my drive lately, both in the morning and evening, and this fact has been on my mind.
Back in June I sold my F-150 and ordered a Ford Maverick, which still hasn’t been built (but that’s a story for another time). Since then, I’ve been driving my F-350 to work. It’s a typical farm truck with a bale bed and big cattle guard. The thought has often crossed my mind if its even worth slowing down for a deer in this thing! It seems like it would be hard for a deer to do much damage to it.
Well, today I almost got to test what I was thinking. On the way to work, two little deer streaked out in front of me. I hit the second one with my tire and nothing else. I had slowed down almost enough to give it time to get by me, but the mass of the 17 year old diesel truck was too much to stop that quickly. Regretful, but with nothing to do about it, I continued on to work. Promptly around the corner, a blue pickup I didn’t recognize pulled out in front of me and proceeded to drive 20mph under the speed limit all the rest of the way to Salem.
Both of these things were very unusual events. I’ve only struck one other deer, and usually the path between me and Salem is clear at least until I get to the Smith Valley Angus area on HH. The intensity of the twilight zone increased…
At work, I had a plethora of unusual and unpleasant interactions throughout the day. The best one was a discussion I had with our Xerox installer. We paid a lot of money for our printer/scanner/fax machine, and they only recently installed it, and installed it incorrectly. It’s been nothing but trouble. I talked to the man, based out of West Plains, and he tried to help me by directing me to some 3rd party software online to allow him to remote into my computer that I have never heard of before. Because we operate under the State of Missouri’s firewall, the software did not work. I explained that it would likely be impossible for me to get the State’s IT support desk to allow the connection. He says, “well, I can’t do anything without it.”
There’s a long silence. He was just here not too long ago.
“Well, are you planning on coming this way in the near future?”
“Nope, not for several months. I’m not driving 2 hours to Salem for this.”
More silence.
No other solutions were offered. I guess we’re just stuck with this multi-thousands of dollars machine that doesn’t work like was advertised, and I’m just supposed to accept that?
*TWILIGHT ZONE INTENSIFIES*
The thing is, with the way business is right now, there’s little I can do to hold him accountable. I’m still dumbfounded that he basically told me to **** off and live it with it. Ridiculous.
Finally, to top it off, on my way home, I’m sitting at the light at Autozone waiting to turn south on MacArthur when one last vehicle passes and I make my turn. Seemingly out of nowhere appeared this truck in front of me. It was dark at this time, so I couldn’t tell much about it, but he was going quite slow. We proceeded out of town 15 mph under the speed limit.
It’s been a long day. My head was pounding. I just wanted to be home.
Finally, he slows down to turn off. I can see in the lights as he turns, it’s a blue pickup.
It’s the same one from this morning.
*TWILIGHT ZONE LEVEL ABOVE 9000*
This was extremely odd to me, as I was coming home at an unusual time after staying about 45 minutes later at work than normal. What are the chances I would get behind the same truck twice in both directions?
As I continued my drive I thought back to my cervid encounter that morning. Was this bound to repeat itself as well? Sure enough, when I started around a corner, I found myself surrounded by deer inviting my rolling steel capsule for an encore dance performance. I decelerated almost to a stop and drove slightly on the shoulder as the herd closed in on all sides. The leader was going the same speed as the truck, keeping pace, when all of sudden he veers to the right and SMACKED right into my cattle guard. Luckily, neither one of us were going fast enough to harm the other. We both kept going and had a nice little race for 100 yards or so before the deer finally figured out to run away from the road instead of down it.
Again, no physical damage, but, the psychological damage was done. After no deer incursions in 5 years, I had two in one day. Two eerily similar drives in the morning and evening, both out of the ordinary.
When I finally make it home I’m greeted by John and Amelia. John immediately asks if we can continue putting together the Statue of Liberty puzzle. You know, the copper statue with the green patina that was a gift from “Francis” and is in New York but surrounded by “the waters of New Jersey?”
He’s four.
I could almost use that as more evidence of the twilight zone, but this is all very normal for him.
We finished the night with a cry when I turned off the iPad.
At least the twilight zone didn’t step inside my house… today.
