Cougars Eat Deer

I was so tired.

Working a twelve hour shift caused me to practically stumble out of the buildings. It was somewhere around three in the morning, I thought, but I couldn't remember when I last checked a clock to see what time it was. Outside it was pitch black and cold, not like inside where it was harshly overbright and warm. I picked up the pace of my footsteps and pulled my Army field jacket in tighter to keep my muscles from shivering. I got to the Cougar, put the key in the door, and practically flew into the driver's seat.

The car was on auto pilot as I left the factory. Sometimes this happens, because I'm too fatigued to remember where I'm going. Luckily the Cougar somehow always knows the way home and I make it there safe and sound.

I was so lazy as the car was driving me homeward that I didn't bother to hit the footpeg for high beams. I leaned back in the bucket seat with one arm outstretched lightly grasping the steering wheel. It had cigarette burns in the plastic from where my grandmother used to hold her hand while she drove. I liked it, always reminded me of her smoking Pall Malls while we were in the car together seeking adventures.

Up ahead there was something orange. Fuzzy looking. The Cougar would know what to do, I was too dazed from work to even think, let alone worry about anything. The car and I were cruising at seventy miles per hour and the 302 under that long solid steel hood wasn't even trying. Walk in the park for that small block engine. Even though I was cold I had my window down so I could listen to the music of hot glass pack dual exhausts ripping through the still night air. My left foot decided on it's own to hit the foot peg. Two extra lights instantly flooded the pavement ahead.

Too late.

The Cougar's hood magically launched upwards into the starry night time sky perhaps under the influence of anti-gravity. An unidentifiable fuzzy orange looking thing that just a moment ago was up ahead of me in the road became an identifiable object. It was a medium sized deer which in a second was consumed by the Cougar. Underneath my 1968 XR-7, body and frame metal sounded like it was exploding with severe force. Suddenly alert and wide eyed, I gripped the wheel with both hands white knuckle style and rode out an earthquake of carnage. The front end eased back down to the pavement as something passed below my seat. I imagined the deer must have been directly under the middle of the car. Then the rear end raised off the ground confirming my hunch as the now very dead deer smacked squarely against the rear differential. One final loud smashing sound later all four wheels were back on the road. Maybe just a few seconds had passed.

Everything seemed okay. Horrible metal groaning wasn't coming out of the car, I scanned the instrument cluster in front of me and all was well. Oil pressure hadn't dropped, water temperature was the same old same old, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was in shock, I suppose. Not knowing what else to do I kept the car heading straight up like nothing had happened. I was lucky. That critter could have come up over the hood just as easily as it had been eaten by the front end. I'm certain if it had come over the top the deer would have smashed through my windshield and killed me.

I laughed like a maniac. I was alive.

Back at home I didn't have any way to light up underneath the car to check for serious damage. Being the impatient fellow that I am I decided to haul ass over to an all nite burger joint on the east side of town and use the floodlights in their parking lot to give a quick inspection to the underside of my Cougar. When I got there no one was in the drive thru lane so I pulled into that and hopped out. I got under the front with the engine still running and thanks to the blindingly bright parking lot lights I could see pretty much everything clearly. Orange tufts of animal fur and bloody gore were everywhere. Fur was crammed into the front license plate holder, underneath the bumper, lower valence, and stuck in random places around the engine block. Luckily for me the oil pan wasn't dented all to shit and that surprised me. I anticipated it would have been thrashed because it seemed the stupid deer went right down the middle underneath my ride. But there it was, the oil pan was just fine.

I climbed back in the car with a feeling of relief that nothing serious was damaged and headed for home.