Saturday, August 16, 2008

Raccoon... Skunk.... Deer!

Okay, so we have this early morning paper route. Actually we have two. One is a wholesale route in which we drive to various businesses and either drop bundles of papers at their door, or fill the racks with Holland Sentinel and/or USA Today papers. The other is a home delivery route - still done from the car - the fun is 'chucking' the papers and hitting your mark from the car window. It's been great to spend the time with the boys in the early morning hours... lots of good talks and lots of fun times, too. I drive it with them and they trade off per week. When Chris has a day off, he graciously offers to let me sleep and he takes the route.

A few days ago, Timi and I were driving the dark highway between wholesale drops and came up over a rise to find four very surprised raccoons huddled over something right in the center of our lane. Well... I was doing about 30 mph. I think two of them got away safely. I feel badly for the other two, but we were kind of chuckling afterward at the 'look' on their faces... rather cartoon-ish... They all looked up at the same time... "Wha?????"

The next day, in the same vicinity, I turned on my bright lights and joked, saying, "Hopefully there are no raccoons out this morning!" In the next second, what did I see??? A skunk... meandering across our lane.... until I hit him. Not so funny with the smell and all.

So we've been 'roadkill' free for a couple of days. (By the way, last week we had the front brakes replaced.)

TODAY, Chris and Jono took the route and I got a phone call as I tried to sleep in...
"Hi, honey. It's me. Ummm. Jono and I just ran over a deer in the road."

(Actually it was off to the side of the lane, but its legs were in the road. Chris swerved to miss it, but ran over the legs.)

"Now the brakes feel really funny and there's a weird smell coming from the front end of the car."

"We're coming home to switch cars."

When they got home, smoke was coming from the front left tire. So, we'll be taking the car into the shop again next week.
Crazy, huh!? I'm staying home today... not driving anywhere.

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