Here is a recent dream, or rather a nightmare: I’m driving alone on a moonless highway late at night. There is no sound but the humming of my engine as we cruise over a perfectly smooth road, as if it weren’t even there, as if we were gliding over the mountains and through the starry air. All of a sudden our perfect stillness is shattered, like a gun shot splitting the night. A split second later, there is the grotesque image of a giant, horned beast’s head turned upside down outside my window. Another split second, and my side window shatters – a million tiny shards of glass shoot across the side of my face and into my ears and mouth.

This was not a dream.

It happened last Friday night as I was driving home from the casino in Salamanca and enjoying the peace and quiet after four hours of performing at the River Bar. The beast was a massive buck (this I know from my momentary glimpse of his head and from the severe damage to my car). It blindsided me as it ran across route 86. Apparently it had leaped at the last second (hoof marks on the hood), and spun in the air where its head, which I saw vividly, struck my window. Despite the violent impact, my 2001 Toyota Camry managed to limp home, groaning the whole way as I shivered in the driver’s seat.

A few days have passed since the incident, during which I contemplated ad nauseam the meaning of Karma, Fate and the Butterfly Effect. But now the shock of the incident has given way to some random, maybe even humorous, thoughts about deer, and about the conflict between nature and the modern world.

Collisions like mine are not uncommon, especially at this time of the year when the females go into heat and hunters begin to prowl in the forests. The combination of fear and sex drive are bound to drive any animal (including humans) crazy. If it were a contest between man and nature, the real winners would be the scavengers – the buzzards, crows, coons, possums, and those hungry humans who don’t mind dragging the good meat off the highway. None of it is a pretty picture, unless, of course, you are a scavenger.

What I experienced took place way out there in the wild – the great Allegheny Mountains that loom to the South across the Watershed. It is a far cry from here in the more civilized world along the shores of Lake Erie, where the wilderness is confined to Lake Erie State Park and other public and private properties. Other than the potential collisions on the highways, man and beast live in relative harmony in these parts.

Fredonia, New York. If there is a land of plenty and a safe haven for deer, it is here. In this veritable Garden of Eden, the hoofed creatures live in peace and harmony among the gentle folks who nourish them and even give them names. Driving along the village streets, you might spy hundreds of them grazing peacefully on the lawns, helping residents by fertilizing their yards and pruning all kinds of troublesome weeds, bushes and young trees. On the college campus, there are enough of them to fill at least one of the empty dormitories. On the streets, the deer are docile, even polite, and need only a slight nudge to give way to drivers. During Christmas time, they are revered by children as first cousins to Santa’s sky riding team.

There is controversy, however, about the proliferation of these descendants of Bambi and his father, the Great Prince of the Forest. Not everyone is happy about their taking up residence in the village. Some see them as a big nuisance – squatters, interlopers, or lazy bums who don’t want to work. They eat everything in sight. Yet the image of a tiny newborn fawn hopping across your yard is one so precious that no one, not even your meanest, grumpiest, most despicable uncle, would dare defile.

Despite the controversy, the village people don’t seem to want to talk about it, or to propose any plausible course of action, like bringing in the wolves and coyotes, or bow hunting for dollars, or hiring real cowboys with lassoos, or deer whisperers.

So the problem is ignored, even though everyone knows it exists, and it has become something of an elephant in the room. Or, rather, a deer in the room with big, beautiful, stupid looking eyes, and eating all the house plants.

I close with an adaptation of the famous old American song “Home on the Range”.”

Home, home in the village / where the deer and the board members play / where seldom is heard / a discouraging word / and the water runs cloudy all day.

Musician, writer, house painter Pete Howard lives in Dunkirk. Send comments to odyssmusic20@gmail.com