Last night I was on the way home after being forced into doing 6 whole hours of work. ;)
The M6, which was fairly empty at 9.30 in the morning, was packed with nutters doing the “brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate”-driving style. After a short while the motorway ground to a complete halt due to the amount of people going to the sales or trying to get back to where they were before Christmas. I had to get off, and I ended up going through Cannock Chase.
Have a read about Cannock Chase if you wish. It’s basically an area of forest near to where we live and it’s possible to drive through it to cut out the motorway journey I usually do. I’ve probably done this several hundred times over the years whenever the motorway gets busy, and provided you’re fairly careful there’s no problem. However, last night there was a problem.
Deer are fairly common, and I usually see one or two during the journey. The limit is 40mph and it’s pretty obvious why – if you hit one going any quicker you’re in pretty big trouble, plus it’s a fairly twisty road. So yesterday afternoon I was driving back in the near-dark when one popped out from the bushes. He was on the left side of me and, despite swerving and trying to get out of the way, he ran into the site of my car and did this.
Nobody else swerved behind me – I could only see their lights – so I went back to see if the deer was OK. There was nothing. I can only assume he’d got smacked in the chops by my wing-mirror and then ran back from where he came. I called the ranger though, so hopefully he’ll make sure the deer is OK.
As for my car, I guess it could’ve been worse. Luckily I managed to use the whole road to get around the deer, but if something had come the other way I would’ve had a lot more damage, and probably one very poorly / dead deer. :( I’m left with a broken mirror and a few dents and scratches where the deers’ feet (hooves? hoofs?) banged into the passenger doors.
Now all I have to do is wait for the insurance company to take it in for repair. I’m going to get me a lovely Ford Ka as a replacement apparently, which will be a bit of a change. Oh, and it shows the benefits of ABS and traction control!