Be Still My Beating Heart

I'm still waiting for my heart rate to come down.

I just had the crap scared out of me.

The dog and I went for a run - well actually her running and me on the ATV - mostly to stretch her legs and to drop-off a couple of turkey decoys at a ground blind in preparation for another foray into the woods in search of more Thanksgiving dinner.

We deposit the decoys and tear-off down the trail at a sprightly twenty miles an hour or so. At about the half-mile point on the main trail I see a flash of movement out of the corner of my left eye. Instantaneously, an adult deer bolts from the trees in front of me.

Jesus Jones!

Instinctively I hit the brakes as a second deer follows the first - clearing the trail in a single bound - only a half-dozen yards in front of me.

What I presume to to have been the flash of movement is a third deer - trailed by a fourth that leap across the trail immediately in front of me and vanish from sight with a thoroughly enthused Labrador retriever in hot pursuit.

The entire sequence of events is over and done-with in seconds.

Then it dawns on me - Swamp, you came awfully close to being trampled by a couple of deer.

Yikes.

I call-off the dog and we head back for home at a more leisurely pace. All the while I'm thinking about how my wife would have somehow worked into my obituary - Death by sharp hooves.

She would do that you know.