a deer in headlights

Mila's biography

When our daughter, Mila, was asked to write a biography for her creative writing course, she wrote the following piece. Most, given the task, would start with a chronological story, throw in their accomplishments, and then end it all with their future goals. Mila saw the world differently. Mila shaped her life around character and virtue. So when she wrote her biography, it was in the form of a story, a retelling of an incident that happened to her and her father. It was the best way she knew how to explain that she, above all else, wanted to be a person that did the hard things because they were right things. She was an extraordinary light.

Here is her story, the biography she wanted to write for herself:

The darkness. The uttermost desperate feeling of pure and solid darkness that enveloped the air is what I remember sensing the most. My father and I were driving home along old crumbling country roads, coming from the lights, noise, and bustling streets of Ottawa, late at night in the dark. There were no stars that shone, and no moon hanging in the sky. No light at all save for the headlights of our car, as well as the ones that passed by, uncommonly, yet always around the bend.

It had been a normal ride, a few words here and there, and some soft music on Sirius XM's the 'Coffeehouse' played quietly in the background. It was then, just after a curve, that our headlights came upon a deer, laying on the yellow lines dividing the road in two.

A swerve, a screech, and we passed the deer without incident. "Something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong.” we kept repeating to each other.

Shock and confusion laced the air, like a fog drifting in upon us. A deer, laying? In the middle of the road? My father turned our car around without a second thought. The vastness of the dark void further accentuated our whirlwind of thoughts. We slowed the car upon reaching the deer again. It heaved itself upwards, every morsel of energy aimed at getting up, up, up.

It was a doe, clearly in shock. She stood, trying to rest her weight on the bare bone of elbow joints, the remainder of the legs now severed and flopping behind, only connected by a thin piece of skin. She scrambled, she fell. Her eyes wide with panic and fear. Blood and fur dusting the road.

Another car had stopped, a family of four. They all exclaimed, "How horrible, how horrible," and watched, horror-stricken, as the deer hobbled, petrified, trying to get away, confused as to why her legs weren't functioning, why she could no longer run and jump as gracefully as she once could.

Two steps, legs bent backwards, fall.

One step, bone clicking on pavement. fall.

My father and the other man coerced her off the road, dragging her by the body she had left. Back end shredded. They gently laid her in the grassy embankment of the ditch.

Eyes wide, scared, fighting for her life, scared of the humans, the road, the crash, why she couldn't get away. She scrambled; jumping, hobbling away, the bottom half of her legs either bending backwards beneath her or flopping behind her by the piece of connected skin.

She moved. She fell. She tried again. She fell. Frantic eyes, drumming heartbeat. A small body against the looming forest behind her. A forest that was her home. A forest that she would never return to.

The conclusion was made - coyotes would eat her alive, or we could do something about it. A teenage boy from the other family got a flashlight, my father his knife. Their father and mine stepped towards the deer, shushing and talking to the tiny doe in low tones. Uttering soothing phrases, words along the lines of "it'll be okay” and "don't be scared". Those words, still and silent, low and loving, reassuring themselves as much as the frantic doe.

Laying half in the ditch, and half in the forest she was trying to escape into. The men kneeled down beside her. Heaving flanks and wide eyes. Two men bent over her, calm and loving, the boy shining a light into the darkness. The man hummed a lullaby, pet her fur, held her close, soothed the dying animal.

My father swiftly slit her throat.

The doe dying, listening to a fading lullaby, her eyes open to the blank sky. She bled, her breath ragged and rattling, caressed by those who killed her out of love. Crimson blood pooled, green grass turned red.

Once her soul had left, her eyes dulled, her flanks still, we all went back to our vehicles. The blood trail, the image of bone on road seared into our minds. The desperation of an animal who wanted life so bad. A deep misery and desolation in our hearts.

A truck, with a rattling engine and windows down, blasting an acoustic country song, slowed to a stop and asked what the matter was. After a quick conversation, the two men from the truck dragged the body of the tiny doe into the back of their pickup and drove away, happy to have gotten some free fresh meat, albeit 'roadkill'.

And just like that, she was gone. The dead doe who had heard a lullaby as her final sound was trucked away into the night that had so quickly brought her to us, the country song fading into the darkness.

The night seemed desperately still, then. The trees shifted and groaned, the silence of a windless night almost deafening, but the doe, her fragility and innocence, had brought a great weight upon my heart.

How, I had wondered, could someone have hit a deer, injured it to that severity, left it in the middle of the road, laying in a pool of its own blood, and drove away with no guilt for its suffering? I imagined the doe, hit, hurt, shocked, laying there, unable to stand, as cars swerved around, headlights blinding her in the otherwise dark night. Surrounded by emptiness and blood. Her tiny body the foreground to the cascading, berating world around her.

My only faith is in hoping that others would do the same as we did, would see the wounded animal, and would caress and love and show her kindness, no matter how hard it may be.

Forevermore is the image of the half-legged doe sketched in my mind, as a reminder of the kind of person I wish to be.

May she forever be listening to a half sung lullaby.