BY HARRY WEEKES
In August, before school starts, a part of my daily routine is to return home after work and take a cookie walk. Just as it sounds, this is when I take a cookie on a walk. As the video I sent to my family said, “Only one of us comes back.”
So, I drove to the house, went inside, put my stuff away, and decided between an oatmeal raisin and an almond chocolate chip cookie. I went almond chocolate chip, put my shoes on, and headed down the driveway.
This is the driveway I came up not five minutes before. It was broad daylight. As my focus turned from the cookie to the road in front of me, drawn by a shape out of place, I had one of those moments where you try to process something that is entirely obvious, but so unusual that you can almost feel your brain working to make sense of it.
I slowed to a stop. A dead deer lay in the road.
OK, not entirely in the road. The deer’s head and neck were stretched out across the road, and the rest of its body hung on the side of the driveway in the sage.
“That’s a deer,” one part of my mind said.
Another part responded, “Yeah, but what is it doing in the road? And how did it get there?”
Curious, I started walking slowly toward it. Then, I did what I do when I am trying to get something’s attention — I whistled, gently and quietly.
The deer went from totally dead to very much alive, and shot up the hillside in several snappy, explosive bounds before turning around and looking back at me on the road.
“What the….” is what I managed to direct its way. “You were napping?”
Of course, the Internet is littered with photos of deer napping. Most of these are fawns, or other images of deer in little forest glens, or tall grass. Some of the photos are at night, taken with deer cams; others look to be from seasoned professionals who found the deer in various natural hideaways.
None of them was of a deer half on and half off of a driveway. Nor did I get any sense that the Internet deer had just fallen asleep.
Needless to say, I have some questions. How long does a deer usually sleep? Was this deer intentionally napping, or did it have some condition, like deer narcolepsy, where it was suddenly overcome by unconsciousness? What physiological mechanism enables something to go from totally prone and asleep to completely alert and running in a millisecond? What was the deer thinking? Was there something like, “OK, he’s home. Now’s a good time for a quick nap.”
I am someone who can fall asleep almost anywhere and anytime. There are pictures of me lying on the kitchen floor, or sleeping next to the threshold of a door, or on the deck of a sailboat. A favorite picture I have referenced before is of me out cold on a carpet, dressed in a sailor suit.
My mom said this is where they found me during my third birthday party.
There is something I am working to process about this encounter, something related to the familiar in unfamiliar circumstances. That mental struggling I do when I encounter someone I know, but in a totally different environment. Or, in this case, something doing something really common, but never commonly encountered.
It is either the start of a long story or the beginning of a short poem — “So much depends on the deer napping on the driveway.” Regardless, like all stories, it leaves me curious to know just a little bit more.