4 am. Westbound on Alameda, where it leads into the hills. A tumbleweed is blown in front of my car, but for a moment it isn't a tumbleweed; it's a fullgrown buck deer. My car pulls into it, the right headlight collides with its left foreleg and the sheer force of the impact drives the animal onto the hood and into the passenger's side of the front window. The sound of cracking glass and breaking bones cries out over the sounds of distressed framework and snapping tendons in that brief symphony of catastrophe. My car screeches to a stop, crooked on the highway. The rear half of the deer slides off the vehicle in an unnatural position, dragging the front half with it in all the places it still has a grip until it is resting partially over the tire well.
I get out of the car and stand over the animal. The creature's honed response to the display of teeth causes its heart to beat faster, but this only serves to hasten the inevitable, the blood in its veins finding new holes and gaps on its regular rounds. Its forelegs twitch with a violent force when my hands get near them. I carefully walk around, grab the smoother elements of its antlers, and give them a long straining pull. The front half finally dislodges from the windshield and the bent antenna, and the whole mess falls to the road with a crunchy splattering thud. I wipe my hands on my shirt and swear when I see the damage done to the car. I walk about a bit, surveying the headlight and the tire, and finally get back inside to attempt to drive home. I hear a cracking noise as the car slowly moves forward, and a brief gutteral yelp.
And now it is a tumbleweed again, probably stuck on a fence on the southern side of the road. And now concludes Moof Practices Being An Evil Bastard.
