Goodnight deer moon 

(Author's note: Sometimes family history isn't recorded in official charts or pedigrees. Sometimes it's written in simple happenstance, and its stories told under the moon.)

As always, unapologetically unedited...

She was dying.

There was a bareness of moonlight that shone down around her; its hues gray and green, with shades of runny black colored in between. As we headed up the road's grade, our headlights made out her futile movements against the pavement. In a way it was a good thing that we had arrived too late. I'd been trying to pay attention to the road and senselessly paying too much attention to the cell reception to check on the dog at home. Seeing her in the road, we'd been startled. Our car, however, seemed to strain against the incline as if hurrying to reach what had been caught in someone else's headlights.

My wife was quiet. I could hear her sigh as we approached, knowing what was in front of us. I remember thinking to myself, "There's a lunar eclipse tonight. I think they called it a Blood Worm Moon. Weird, huh?"

Then we saw her, a young doe in the road. Her struggles for life on the pavement weren't easy to see.

Ahead of us, a truck had pulled off to the shoulder not far from where the deer was. The truck (or the person in it) sat there still, like some sentry from another world. It was a shiny new work truck, white, with the inconspicuous lettering of some company called Ventana scrambled on its door side. The darkness drank up the light around the truck's windows, so that passing by I could not see inside. I'm not sure why, but at that moment I pulled over, almost too quickly, and pulled up alongside the road not far from where the deer lay but ahead of the truck. I looked back at the truck behind us, and said to my wife, “I can't just keep going. I have to offer to help.”

She was quiet, not saying a word or even worrying as dear ones do when one decides to step out into some portion of the unknown dark.

Getting out of the car, my shoes crunched in the graveled incline toward the deer and the truck further below. I slowed a bit as I walked past the doe and her suffering. She appeared to be close to the end, but it was dark and what was left of her life force or what was simply just the darkness I couldn't say. I'm no vet, nor have I watched a lot of things dying. It was just too hard to tell. Still, her struggling presence in the road felt intrepid to the scene of my walking past her, the truck behind us, and my car ahead.

They all felt like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle I couldn't quite fit together.

The Blood Worm Moon begins - March 13, 2025

Arriving at the truck, the driver rolled down his window. He was on his phone, on speaker, and he was trying to reach the local police via their recorded message to advise them about the dying deer - a dying deer, which would surely prove to be a hazard to other drivers on the moonlit dark road.

The man in the truck didn't say much more than what he was attempting to do, that is trying to contact the local people in charge. I asked him if he needed some help moving the deer out of the road before the authorities arrived, and, without cause, asked him if he had been the one who'd been unfortunate enough to hit her. He quickly said he had not hit the deer and had only pulled over to help. I asked him if he had a shovel or some other tool, thinking he or we might need to move the deer out of traffic, or worse, to help release the doe's spirit on her journey to God.

He was silent.

The man in the truck simply looked flummoxed, not like he was unwilling to help, but more so that he hadn't thought that far ahead. He was dull eyed and seemed to have to think hard about what he should do next. The recorded voice of the police department’s answering machine droned on in his hand and he just looked back at me - nearly as lost looking as that doe must have been a few minutes before.

For some reason I walked away from him.

It wasn't that our brief conversation had concluded, but I walked away anyway, heading back up the crunchy incline of roadway and back toward the deer. To my left, cars were beginning to accumulate heading up the hill and swerving around the dying deer, and now swerving around me too. I had almost made it back to the deer when a small black car pulled off to the side of the road ahead of me. The car's window rolled down and a kid with a shock of long curly blonde hair yelled out to me. I could see his phone glistening in the dark of his dashboard.

“Hey, do you need some help?” He said.

Not really knowing what I needed, and more or less praying that the doe had finished in her passing, I said to the kid, “Not really sure." I continued making my way up the incline, past the kid in the car with the open window and moved toward the piece of pavement where the doe no longer seemed to be struggling. I could see that the doe's neck was broken. It was oddly crooked in the darkness. Its angle was wrong and too loose. Undaunted, the young man got out of his car and followed behind me toward the doe. I could feel him behind me more than I could see him. His spirit was different than that of the man in the work truck. It felt like he was studying me for some future lesson. There was no movement from the white truck further downhill.

Reaching out, I touched the doe's fur. I could feel the recent death. I began speaking to young deer, telling her that she was okay now but that I still needed her help. I told her that her work wasn't done yet. I told her she needed to help me to get her body off the road. I told her I was sorry this had happened to her, and I thanked her for her sacrifice. I told her that she did not deserve this. I don't know why I felt so compelled to talk to the dead deer. It felt like her presence was still near, and that she hadn't quite left the scene of the accident. I felt an odd comradery to her, and I spoke to her in a quiet, determined voice I almost didn't recognize. As I spoke to her, I realized I was speaking to her passing life as if she were somehow my kin.

I knew that I needed to move her.

Her body was large and I wasn't sure I could do it alone. I felt the young man with the shock of blonde curly hair move back away from me. The doe's back lay towards me, so I grabbed handfuls of her hide in my hands to tug on her, hoping I could pull her body back off the road and away from the swerving cars. Her neck flopped to the side unnaturally. It was so damn dark out there too. The full moon was hidden in the clouds now and for a moment it was just me and the dry corpse of this friend I'd met on the journey of life. As I pulled at the doe's back her fur came off in clumps in my hands. It was dry, and brittle, and it made me think she'd been dead for much longer than she'd actually been.

Hadn't she just died? Hadn't I just watched her struggle against the road and the night?

I reached down again and grabbed deeper into her fur and into her hide. I heard the kid with the shock of blonde hair yell to me, "Hey, I have a towel if you want," as another chunk of fur crept out of her hide and into my hands. "Nah, I'm okay," I softly yelled back to the kid. For some reason, touching the now dead deer didn't matter to me. I had asked her dying spirit to help me, and now it was my turn to live up to my end of the bargain and get her body out of the road. She wanted dignity. It was all she wanted. She'd told me so. I wanted to give her that, even if it only meant the dignity of a crunchy incline where the turkey vultures would surely feast at sunrise.

I gave her body a few last pulls, my legs straining against the dark, and finally I tugged her body over and back off to the soft dry grass beyond the rocky side. She was safe, or at least as safe as I could make her. She was after all only a deer who'd been killed on the road, but for me, in those final moments she had become "some sort of something" that felt like, well, if you must know, like family.

The kid with the shock of blonde curly hair jumped back in his car and waved me off, returning to wherever young people go. The man in the white truck just watched from behind, never approaching, never offering more than the busy signal of the police department on his phone. I walked back to the car shaken a bit and rejoined my wife. It was so dark. As I opened the car door I saw a glint of silver in the ground. Funny I thought. It must be a piece of metal or a candy wrapper. It was so bright, but it was also so dark outside. I was shaken a bit from the adrenaline. I needed to get home and check on the dog, and back to normal life. As we went to leave, the man from the white truck approached us. I rolled down the window and he thanked me for helping him and told me that the police would remove the doe's corpse tomorrow. It was all good.

We had each done our part.

We were close to home and as we turned into the neighborhood I shook off what I could of the darkness and the dying deer from my mind. We weren't quite home yet when I said to my wife, "Have you seen my phone?" Pulling over, we looked but quickly realized the phone was nowhere to be found. It was about then that I remembered that shiny piece of something lying in the road near the dying deer. It was then that I realized that it was my phone that I had seen, turned face downward in the roadside and into the gravel of the scene of a white truck, a blonde haired teenager, and the last gasps of life of a dying deer.

Making a quick u-turn I sped back up the other side of the incline in the full moon's darkness. I admit. I was in a bit of a damn panic. Where was that damn deer at? It was hard to see the side of the road now. The white truck and the kid with the shock of curly blonde hair were gone. Finally, and with my wife's help, I spotted a small black casing off to the side, and up the incline away from the body of the doe. Flipping another turn, I retrieved my phone, not worse for the wear. Its light illuminating the shadowy body of my friend the doe as I walked back to the car. He life passing but now awaiting the next chapter of her journey off to the side of the road.

I don't know what the message was here but I feel there was one.

Maybe it's just as simple as don't worry about your damn phone while you are driving in your car. Maybe it says we are all in some way, nothing more than a dying deer hit by random objects in the moonlight. Maybe it's about the people who will stop to help, or give a shit about you on your dying day. Maybe it's about no good deed going unpunished. Maybe it's not about anything at all or that the universe seeks balance. I had thought I was doing a good thing to help the deer and give her some dignity off the road.

Looking back now though, I think she was helping me too.

ET phone home?

Beware the Blood Worm Moon?

Goodnight, sweet deer moon.