I didn’t get a good look at the deer that tried to kill itself by running into the front of our van in the middle of the night on our way back from Minnesota.
I like to think its eyes were teary, yet hard with resolve. The deer had regrets, but had made up its mind. Life had no joy for it anymore. There was nothing left for it but to leap in front of a steel box hurtling down the highway at 75 miles an hour and end it all.
No one was hurt in the impact. I’m not sure Baby Jax even woke up for it. But smoke was pouring from beneath the crumpled hood, and the smell of radiator fluid filled the passenger compartment as my lovely wife pulled the van to the side of the road. There was no sign of the deer.
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere in South Dakota.”
We were able to limp the van to a rest stop we’d passed a mile back. The last quarter mile, the dash board flashed and dinged at us that we were dangerously low on radiator fluid. Once safely situated beneath the mosquito-swarmed lights of the rest area, we pulled out our phones and (eventually) got a tow to the nearest town with a garage and a hotel, some 30 miles away. I asked the tow truck driver if he could recommend a good service garage. He just laughed.
“We only got three in town, and they’re booked up for the next two weeks!”
How about car rental in town?
“The Ford garage rents cars. You can give them a call.”
It turned out the Ford garage only rented cars locally, since they were the same cars they sold. “I can rent it to you,” said the Ford man, “but you’ll have to bring it back here, which would defeat the purpose.”
After speaking with the Ford man, I spent the rest of the morning on the phone with the insurance company. They sent another tow truck to take the van (and us) to Pierre, where they had a garage that could do an official assessment, and we could find a rental car that could get us home. The tow truck driver said his employer, Wegner Auto, actually rented cars, so they’d be glad to help us out.
When we arrived in Pierre, we learned that Wegner didn’t have any cars available to rent. The good news was that Vicki, who was in charge of the rental service, was on a first-name basis with the Avis and Budget rental agencies in town.
“They mostly just do local,” she said. “But sometimes they rent one-way if they have a car they need delivered. Let me make some calls.”
After an hour of phone calls and wheeling and dealing, we realized our best bet was to get a rental car delivered from Rapid City — three hours away. Unfortunately, it was too late in the day for that plan, and we’d be stuck in South Dakota another night.
“You’ll need a room,” said Vicki. “Let me make some calls.”
She found us an affordable place to stay and had one of the garage employees haul us down there, complete with a stop at another garage where the van was being looked at, in order to grab our luggage.
The van, to no one’s surprise, turned out to be a complete loss. We said goodbye to it the next morning as we transferred the last of our road trip supplies into the rental van and headed west.
Overall, we were lucky. The incident could have been a disaster. The suicidal deer could have taken us with it. The airbags could have deployed, making us lose control and head into the ditch. But in the end, it only cost us an extra day in South Dakota, and in return gave us a great story — and a friendly place to buy a car if you’re ever auto-shopping in Pierre.
