Watch for Deer

Our friend and fellow songwriter John Lamb has a song called “Watch for Deer” and I’ve always enjoyed it because watching for deer is something that we’ve had to do for years. Like small airplanes, deer and musicians just don’t mix. And in the Midwest, deer are the predominant life form, even making their way downtown to the heart of Chicago and happily eating every tulip and tree in Millennium Park.

Every deer secretly has a death wish, I believe. They sense when a musician is driving and will make a kamikaze run toward that musician’s vehicle, whether it’s a van, tour bus, or bicycle. It is one of the unwritten rules of life on the road for musicians. I don’t know when this struggle began, but it is there. As a musician, you have to be ready for deer and have a taste for venison because they have a taste for heavy metal and I don’t mean music.

Over the years, Brian and I have had our run-ins with wildlife. Sometimes even during a show, a critter or two will steal the stage for a while. One time, we had just finished a set playing at the Rolling Ground in Wisconsin. We were perched on the side of a hay wagon stage talking to our friends when out of the sky came tumbling a sparrow-sized gypsy moth. Attached to it was a brown bat and they were caught in a life struggle. They rolled across the stage for several moments. We all could see the bat trying to eat the moth and the moth kicking the bat off with its tremendous wings. In a flash they both took off into the air and were gone. Nobody said a word. It was one of the most bizarre encores we had ever had for one of our shows.

Another time the insects were our opening act. In this case, we were driving into Austin, Minnesota to play a show in September. Brian had his mother-in-law’s Honda Civic that he kept strewn with half-consumed cans of pop, perfect for the little meat-eating hornets that come out at that time of year. The show was an outdoor party for seniors and their families at the residence and several hundred people were waiting as we rolled onto the grounds. Little old ladies were waving at us as we headed toward the band stand. At that point, two or three little hornets made their way out of these pop cans and up the legs of my pants. Immediately I was stung and started pulling my pants off in front of the crowd, slapping my legs and butt and flailing around in jerks and spasms. Brian quietly exited his side of the car and started taking out equipment as a silence descended upon the festivities and heads turned to watch. It was quite a show.

Late one night, about three in the morning, we were driving along the Mississippi south toward Lansing while listening to Art Bell on “Coast to Coast” AM. For those who have never listened to the show, there are usually stories about aliens, ghosts, Armageddon, or asteroids due to hit the planet. That night they were talking about ghosts as I was starting to doze on the passenger side of the car. All of the sudden, right as a ghost hunter was to play a tape-recorded sound of a ghost “talking,” this huge shape came across our windshield. Wham! A big barn owl flew straight into us and knocked the rearview mirror right off. Brian slammed to a stop and we stumbled out to see what had hit us. There in front of us the unfortunate owl lay dead. We were totally wide awake and I was never so scared in my life. The owl had left a dusty, ghostly image of its last flight on our windshield. It was a sad, but adrenaline-filled feeling.

One fall afternoon, Brian and I were driving across Allamakee County in Iowa, heading to a body shop to get some work done on our van. We had bought the van after it was hit by a deer and repaired at this shop. A young guy came speeding up behind us. Now, we have learned that it just isn’t worth speeding to any place. Getting there in one piece is the way to survive out on the road. But this young fellow was not going to let our van delay his getting wherever he had to be. He started passing us on a curve, and at the same time a huge deer came running from a field. You guessed it. The young guy passed us going full force into the deer, smashing the right side of his car. About ten minutes later, he slowly passed by us with his right wheels pathetically wobbling as we sat at the body shop. There was some sort of poetic justice in it all, but no justice for the deer unfortunately. Of course, I think it was aiming for us.

We have luckily never had a serious collision with a deer, but we came very close on our way back from Colorado recently. It was about 5 am and I was driving near Ogallala, Nebraska on our way east when in the early dawn light came a mule deer. I instinctively slowed down as I watched it cross the road about a quarter mile ahead. It ran across the eastbound lanes of I-80 and into the median. I kept my eye on it as I slowed down and looked to see if there were any other deer nearby. Usually where there is one, there are two. So far so good -- it looked like it was going to cross the westbound lanes. But then it saw two approaching cars. Suddenly it swerved and I could see little puffs of dust from its hooves as it circled back toward me. I knew what happened: It smelled musicians and took off after our van. By now I was slowing down to about 25 miles an hour. The deer came out on the road and ran right into our right headlight. “What was that?” said Brian, popping awake in the passenger’s side. “Deer,” I said, pulling the van over to the shoulder and expecting a grisly scene. Miraculously, the deer was standing off to the side and looking at me. I looked at it and looked at the headlight it had knocked out. The headlight looked like someone had taken a hammer and expertly knocked the glass out. I looked up at the deer again. It gave me an angry look, like “Next time you come through, it will be the whole car” and hopped the fence, trotting perfectly across the field.

The final wildlife story came as Brian and I were down near Alton, Illinois. We were at a family party and staying overnight in the state park. Everyone was asleep when I heard the sound of happy little chattering. I sat up and as my eyes adjusted, I saw a whole family of raccoons on top of our van. We had left the driver’s side window open, and they had managed to get inside and start feasting on trail mix that was in a container on the floor. It was a party. One raccoon was up on the dash, sort of swaying as another one was grappling with the window. It looked like it was trying to open up the door. A couple more were singing up on roof, little peanut M&M’s clutched in their hands. I got up and dashed out there in my underwear. I banged on the window and immediately the whole fiesta dispersed. I rolled up the window and looked in our van. Luckily they didn’t do anything more serious that mix up the trash that we already had from days on the road, but they had almost eaten all of our trail mix. As I fell asleep, I could hear them complaining as they tried to get the window open. They worked on it for about ten minutes and then they took off. I swear I heard one say. “Screw these guys. Let’s get the deer.”