Last night after supper we drove over to Aurora: I needed some graham flour for my bread-baking--got some at Marc's. We also grabbed a Diet Coke at Mickey D's and headed back to Hudson "the back way": Rt. 82-Herrick Rd.-Ravenna Rd.-Old Mill Rd.-Stow Rd.-Aurora-Hudson Rd.-home.
On Ravenna--at about 6:15 it was already dark--we saw traffic slowing ahead of us. We slowed. Saw some sort of figure lying on the road. Crept closer. It was a young doe--not in any evident pain (but who can tell?), her head up, alert, not looking particularly afraid or alarmed.
She was virtually invisible until we were almost on her, lying in the lane opposite from us. An approaching car did not seem to see her, was not slowing ... this did not look good. We braced ourselves for something awful.
But then the driver saw, braked, his lights illuminating the doe.
To our left we saw a man in some kind of uniform slowly, on foot, approaching the creature.
I don't know what happened next. We drove on (there were impatient drivers behind us), and the condition and fate of that doe will remain mysteries to us.
I prefer to think that it all turned out well. That the doe was not injured--just confused or tired (had something been chasing her?). That the officer helped her to her feet, that she dashed off, back into the woods where her life belongs, perhaps a flash of gratitude--if deer are capable of such--dancing across her mind before she vanished into the darkness, into a future she'd nearly lost.
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