Rural Living

A warning, this post might not be for the faint of heart, or for the young at heart. And it's a picture-less post. You'll thank me later...

I've been telling people that we live in a fairly rural area. I get the feeling that people often think "An hour outside of D.C.? How rural can that be?" How's this for a convincing picture? Right at this very moment, a mere 60-ish feet from where we are sitting, there lies a dead deer in our front yard.

I'll tell the story from my perspective.

Just after 7am, Kelly got home from her night on the town early morning swim training. I was on snooze alarm #3 when Kelly walks into the room and says: "There is a dead deer on the side of the road outside our house. I just pulled part of a car bumper from the road into our driveway."

"A dead deer? Seriously?!?" I replied. While the news was somewhat odd, I don't know why I would have doubted her.

There wasn't much to do at that moment - I had no real desire to go see the thing. I get a little squeamish seeing them on the side of the road when they aren't right next to our mailbox.

So, what should we do? Who do we call? Is there someone that takes care of this, or do we have to take care of it ourselves? Do we call animal control, or the highway department? Is there an animal control in our county? We decided to let Kelly handle the phone calls since the county offices weren't yet open and I needed to get to work. I walked out to my car and confirmed, yep, a dead deer in our front yard, just off the side of the road. Gross.

I told the story to a few people at work and didn't think much of it until I got a text from Kelly: "So I called and left a message. Saw a VW van here just now. Turns out the deer wasn't dead. They shot it. Wait till it stopped moving and left. Deer is now in our ditch."

What?!? Some guys in a Volkswagen van came and shot the deer? This conjured up vivid images in my head of hillbillies in flannel jumping out of their van with a rifle, shooting roadkill. And it wasn't dead? Kelly and I could have sworn it was. It definitely wasn't moving.

I text back "Whaa? Who was in the vw?"

"Animal control. I'm assuming they will wait for awhile to take the deer to make sure it's dead? I hope they come back for it." she replied.

Well, I hope so too! But why is animal control in a VW van? Now I'm picturing county hired hillbillies in uniform jumping out of their van with a rifle, shooting roadkill.

I get home and Kelly told me she ran to the window after hearing a few gunshots. She looked out and saw Animal control with a gun, standing next to the deer as it was kicking its last kicks. Pretty gruesome stuff. And why the VW? Turns out in the excitement I misread the text. She typed "vvan" which my brain read as "VW van".

And no, they never came back to pick it up. Looks like we'll be making a few more phone calls tomorrow. That is unless some hillbilly comes and picks it up tonight.