Tonight, a lone deer crossed the street in front of me immediately after me psychically pleading with the young doe to choose a better moment – like 15 seconds in the future would be perfect, for example.
I was riding an electric unicycle. When I saw the deer chilling alone in the grass, I panicked thinking this deer is going to panic because it’s separated from the forest side of the street. It’s gonna go for it thinking it has only this one chance, this one moment to seize everything it ever wanted in life! It’s gonna try to dash across the street in front of me or through me to get to safety!
I watched the doe sprint across the street lit by my single headlight and a pair from an oncoming car – a car that honked its horn in a way that seemed like the driver and the deer were familiar with each other. I glanced left to see that the deer was heading for a fence separating it from the forest line. Then, my panic panicked because my Disney friend will likely notice the fence and sprint along next to it or worse: it will see a wall and bail to run in the opposite direction.
As I’m picturing the deer, flip a u- turn to go back into the street, the deer did something far from my what I imagined what that animal could do. The deer stopped in front of the fence and broad-jumped over it.
The jump was so clean. The fence was your standard 4 foot tall chain-link variety. If the deer’s feet would have clipped the fence, I would’ve heard the sound, I think. But wow it so smoothly leaped over the fence that I rode home thinking I don’t know anything about how strong deer legs are.
My brain kind of broke for a few minutes. Deer are really serious jumpers. I’m smiling right now writing this because the act is STILL an unbelievable feat. Yeah, even though I watched it happen.
I guess I say all of that to say I want to have a flogging dream tonight. The sky – even with clouds blocking the stars – looked beautiful. The sky, the humid sweet-smelling country air we’re calling to me. And I want to see the world from a few hundred feet in the air tonight.
