A confession; I am, and always have been, a reluctant driver. As a teenager, I was a passenger in a car that came so near to being in a fatal accident (Autobahn, driver fell asleep, and a resultant 2"-deep dent was carved down the entire driver's side of the rental car, after it struck the highway divider with a screech of metal that still resounds in my ears whenever a truck swerves too close to us on a highway) that I addressed the subsequent phobia of driving that I (weirdly) developed (because you'd think I'd be afraid of being the passenger, after that, but phobias are tricksy things) by spending my entire adult life in the city of New York, where nobody who doesn't want to ever has to drive. Since I had already obtained my driver's license, I simply kept renewing it whenever the time rolled around; it's the best form of I.D. you can show them at the bank, after all.
And I had a sterling record, with no points on my license, because I never drove anywhere. If I couldn't get there by public transportation, I took a cab, or else passengered in somebody else's car. Somehow, I wasn't worried that anybody else was going crash the car - only that I was going to kill myself, or, even worse, someone else, if I were to drive. So for almost 35 years, I serenely maneuvered out of any and all driving situations, which was quite awkward at times, and certainly rather trying to my husband on long road trips when he would have liked to give somebody else a turn at the wheel.
This, of course, does not work once you move to the far end of a long private road in the suburbs.
Fortunately, I had, at my husband's (mostly) gentle insistence, been doing some very, ve-ry laid-back driving during our summer Adirondack sojourns by the time we moved to Rockland County. I had progressed from terrified squeaks of "No! I can't! You do it!" when he urged me to drive the 800 yards to the laundry hut at the requisite 5 mph of our summer community's compound, to driving the quarter mile to the grocery store at 20 mph, thus aggravating all the locals crawling along behind me in the 30 mph zone, because they were used to clipping along at 40 (unless they spotted a police cruiser), to the hideous moment when he coached me up the ramp to the Northway ("Floor it, honey! You need to hit the highway doing 60 - don't worry, it's a nice, long on-ramp, you'll have plenty of room to merge!") I was convinced he had a death wish for us both, but I closed my eyes, panicked as soon as I realized that I had my eyes closed, opened them, prepared for death and merged onto the nearly-empty highway, feeling like General Eisenhower invading Normandy.
My greatest fear was always that I would make a terrible, irrevocable mistake, and somebody, or something, would be killed. When I was small, I was one of those children who would burst into tears at the sight of a squashed skunk on the highway, wailing loudly for Daddy to turn the car around, go back, and take it to the doctor so the "poor little skunkie" could be fixed.
I moved to an area that abounds in wildlife previously unencountered by me outside of the confines of a zoo. In my first week of Rockland residency, I saw:
- A flock of wild turkeys - at least fifteen of them - all looking at me with the supercilious "You? Who are you?" sneer that the Caterpillar gave Alice
- Half a dozen deer, of various sizes and ages, serenely cropping at the grass and anything else they could get their teeth into in my backyard ( thus dooming forever my ambitious plans for a really spectacular flower garden)
- A fox (which was pretty cool, and I excitedly called up my husband at the office, interrupting him at the conference table in order to describe it in detail)
- A groundhog - which happened to have the poor judgement to be in the yard when I was letting the dog out to pee. Since both the groundhog and the dog are quite fat and slow, what ensued was a chase scene right out of the Keystone Kops, with both parties waddling about excitedly until the groundhog, swearing horribly about Those Fucking City People, dove into its hole and ended the matter. The dog, of course, was enchanted by this delightful new game, and now makes a beeline for the groundhog's lair every time I let her out the door.
- A coyote. Twice. Again, in my yard. Makes me wonder whether letting the dog out to pee, even under strict supervision, really is such a good idea. This one also warranted an excited call to my husband's office; he, after calmly saying, "A coyote? Are you sure it wasn't a deer?" aggravated me nearly to death by remarking that coyotes are scavengers, so the dog is perfectly safe and I shouldn't get so nervous. I responded with 10 minutes of violent Googling and a follow-up call detailing every instance of coyote attacks on Man and Dog I had found in my online research. To which he retorted that anything you read online in the N.Y. Post doesn't count, and that he had to get going because it was almost time for his business lunch in the charming little Manhattan bistro a block from his office, where I used to meet him for lunch back when I was still a Girlfriend and not just a Wife. So I hung up, ate some leftover supermarket potato salad, and sulked.
- Assorted squirrels, chipmunks, and (according to the man who built the stairs to the deck behind our kitchen - for the previous homeowners apparently had been willing to live without stairs for over 30 years) a snake of indeterminate species that lives in some sort of cement cistern near the base of the new stairs. Now that the Stairs Man told me that, I do not feel safe stepping off the stairs and into the yard, unless I am wearing heavy boots that cover me to the knee, and not even then, really. (Did I mention, I also have this phobia of snakes?)
- All kinds of birds. In point of fact, my house is in a protected bird sanctuary area, so - no surprises there.
- Hornets. And mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes. I wish the birds would eat them.
As you can see, I am a keen observer of Nature (albeit preferably through a really sturdy double-glassed window) and a friend to all creatures great and small. One of my strongest and (I thought) most achievable resolves upon moving to Safariland was that no hapless bird or mammal should lose its life due to my carelessness at the wheel. (The snakes, I'll grant you, were on their own.)
You already know where this is going, don't you?
Exactly. Last week, on Thursday, to be precise, at about 11:15 a.m. on a nice, sunny day, I turned left on a road leading toward our home. I was not speeding. In fact, I was slightly under the speed limit. The sun was not in my eyes, I was focused on the road. I was not fiddling with the air conditioning, or with the radio. To my left was a series of identical houses with identical manicured lawns; to my right, a marshy, wild area that was just the sort of place an animal might pop out of, so I was going slowly and keeping an eye on the marshy part to the right.
And just at that moment, a groundhog came barreling downhill off one of the manicured lawns to my left, and hurtled between the front and back wheels of my car.
I hit the brakes, but of course it was too late.
I made a U-turn, circled, and went back immediately, with the confused idea that I had to make sure that it was really dead, because I could not leave it there to suffer if it was not. What I would have done if it had not been dead, I have no idea, as I had nothing in the trunk with which to pick up an injured wild animal that easily weighed about 10 lbs. I was spared the dilemma. It lay there, eyes closed, its mouth a trifle open as if in surprise, with only a tiny dark trickle of blood to show what had happened. The little creature's life, indubitably, had fled.
I pulled over, and I cursed, and I cried, and I pounded on the steering wheel.
I can't tell you how rotten I felt. I had been so sure that this was never going to happen, if only I was careful enough. And I'd been careful. Hadn't I?
I did not like to leave it lying in the road, but had no choice, as I had nothing to pick it up with. I took a long last look at it, noticing the beauty of its fur; the elegant structure of the right foreleg, crooked as if about to run; the delicacy of the small but powerful paws. I said I was sorry, and that I hadn't meant to do it. That I wished I could make it un-happen. I wondered whether the little creature had had any premonition that this was going to be its last day . . . I hoped that, up until the moment it ran under my car, it had been having a happy day, full of tasty grubs and lazy sunbathing, and I took a little comfort in the knowledge that its death had been instantaneous.
I kept feeling bad, on and off, all day long. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought about the groundhog, and was sorry all over again.
The next day, I steeled myself to drive the same route, dreading the sight that lay ahead, but the groundhog was gone. Someone had gotten it out of the road.
I slowly drove home, relieved that I had not had to look upon graphic evidence that all my good resolutions, so seemingly achievable in theory, had come to nothing in the fact of the fact that I had absolutely no control over Nature and wildlife, however much I might flatter myself that I did.
Musing on this, I turned onto our road - and stopped short. There in front of me, not fifty yards from my car, was a group of deer straight out of Disney. Two antlered bucks, a doe, and a fawn. The doe flicked an ear in my direction, then unhurriedly led the fawn into the copse, while the bucks stood their ground, regarding me with a sort of friendly curiosity. I gazed in absolute wonder, astounded at their nearness, and at their utter lack of fear. At last, they broke eye contact and gracefully threaded their way through the woods, following in the steps of the doe and the fawn.
In that moment, an ineffable sense of forgiveness come over me, and I whispered once more, "Thank you.. I am so very sorry," and drove home very carefully, because my eyes were still a little blurry from the tears.
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