Taxidermy
I am driving down the well-worn spine of the Appalachian mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania. A quick glimpse of the speedometer indicates that I am doing seventy-five miles per hour. The Passat hugs the road at this speed with the confidence of a poodle humping your leg. Barely working, the car, if it could talk, would complain of boredom. "Is this all you need from me today?" I consider stepping on the gas pedal. It’s a clear beautiful Sunday morning. I am on a long empty straightaway. It would be fun to hit warp speed for a short while. But up ahead, a few hundred yards or so, I spot something on the side of the road. Something large. Instead of hitting the gas, I hit the brakes. This is deer country. Deer shoot across this highway with reckless abandon. The shoulder of the road is littered with the carcasses of the ones that didn't make it.
It is scary to think about all the dead deer on the side of the road, especially since each one that you see means a collision with a car or truck. Incidents of cars hitting deer happen so regularly up here in this mountainous country that they aren't even newsworthy unless somebody dies. Even so, the tragedy might warrant only a few sentences of coverage in the newspaper just above the announcement for the Kiwanis Club pot luck dinner on Friday night. It would take a spectacular, fiery crash involving a car and a deer to make headlines: "Car Hits Deer, Crashes into Local Dairy Queen...damage will close popular ice cream store for months...driver dies."
In the split second when I first notice this thing on the side of the road, I suspect just that - a deer. I can't tell if it is dead or alive. As I cover the ground between it and me I quickly realize that it isn't a deer at all. It is a couch. The shape gives it away rather quickly. However, there’s something unusual about this couch. It sits on the shoulder of the road up against the guard rail to my right. A small bit of it is actually on the road itself. I swing into the passing lane and slow down almost to a stop to have a look. The couch seems to be covered in fur. I can’t tell if it is real or not, but it sure looks real. Brown fur with white spots. Intentional or not, this couch appears to be covered in deer fur. This is a deer couch. It is perhaps the ugliest couch I have ever seen.
I can’t linger in the passing lane. A massive tractor-trailer truck is barreling down the mountain behind me. I hit the gas and move on. I take one last look in my mirror. Reflecting back at me I can see the rear panel of the couch. It looks like Bambi. A deer couch!
I wonder how this couch came to be. And then to be here. Well, here’s one scenario. It begins with deer grazing in the fields. Along comes a hunter. Kablam. He brings one down. Next year, the same. And the year after that. Before long, there is a freezer full of venison. A few heads with antlers on the wall. Deer feet holding up a coffee table. A couch in the living room. One day, the hunter’s wife says, “Enough.” She demands that her husband “get that couch out of here.” She’s sick of all this deer stuff. It’s morbid. She doesn’t even like the taste of venison. “Who does? I’ll tell you – nobody!” She gives him an ultimatum: either the deer couch goes or he does. So, one night with the help of his good buddy and a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, he loads up the deer couch in his pick up truck along with the rest of his belongings and moves out. He doesn’t bother to put up the tailgate in the truck, and as drunk as he is, he doesn’t notice when the deer couch falls off the truck and onto the highway. A short while later a car comes along and slams on its brakes, thinking it is about to hit a deer. The driver gets out and moves the couch to the side of the road. (He actually gets to handle the deer couch; I am slightly envious.)
And that’s where this story ends. Strange but harmless. However, it might have ended differently. Suppose the driver actually hits this couch. Suppose it is late at night. It’s foggy. He slams on his brakes, swerves frantically, flips his vehicle, rolls end-over-end down the side of the mountain, into the stream below. The driver is killed. The next morning, the police find the car, the body, the couch. A report is made. Next of kin are notified. An article is placed in the local newspaper: “Car hits Deer Couch…” The man who owns the couch sees the article and thinks, “hey, that’s my deer couch.” The wife thinks, “Oh my God, if only I hadn’t thrown him out.” He promises never to hunt again. She says come back home. The couple reunites in a tearful embrace at the Kiwanis Club pot luck dinner on Friday night.
10:07:11 AM 
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