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Woman's drive home gets a sad interruption

After a deer runs into her car, Pam Fix can't just leave. She sits in a ditch with the animal for hours, rubbing it until it no longer needs rubbing.

By ERIN SULLIVAN
Published August 22, 2006

LAND O'LAKES - The doe's face smashed against the driver's side window and its body sheared off the mirror. There was no blood.

Pam Fix knelt by the doe, which at about 140 pounds weighed more than she did. Pam, a 60-year-old blond with a raspy voice, dragged the doe to a soft spot in a ditch by the side of the road. There she waited in the dark with the doe for help to arrive.

"I'm sorry, baby," she said. "I'm so sorry."

She held the doe's neck and rubbed her side, trying to calm her so she wouldn't thrash any more. The doe's back was broken, her hind legs paralyzed. Her front legs made a half circle in the dirt from kicking. Her eyes were open wide, and frothy saliva streaked down her cheek. Pam kept saying soft things to her and caressing her. The doe's teats were swollen. She recently had fawns, which were hopefully now grown up enough to take care of themselves.

Pam knew the doe could not be saved. She has worked for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office for 20 years. She's now in the mail room at the Land O'Lakes jail. She's not the crying type. But this - she wiped tears from her cheeks. She could not stand seeing the doe suffer.

"Shhh," she said. "Stop thrashing. You're making it worse. Shhh."

This was the first deer she'd hit.

"There was no way I could avoid her," Pam kept saying - to herself more than to anyone else.

"She ran at me."

The accident happened Friday night, around 8 o'clock. Pam was a mile from her Land O'Lakes home on Ehren Cutoff, a little ways south of State Road 52. A red car going the opposite way had swerved to miss the doe, which had cleared a fence and run full tilt across the two-lane road and into Pam's door. Pam had groceries in her trunk. Her chocolate ice cream melted.

A highway patrolman showed up, but he said he wasn't, by regulation, allowed to shoot the deer. About an hour after the accident, Pasco sheriff's Cpl. Jeremy Colhouer arrived.

He called a veterinarian to see whether the doe could be saved. She couldn't be. He called to see whether any big cat reserves or gator farms wanted the doe's meat. They didn't answer. He finally found a deputy whose friend said he would come and shoot the deer and take her home to eat. He would be coming in a black pickup truck.

"You can go," Colhouer said.

"No," Pam said. "I'm not going anywhere until she's taken care of."

"But there's no reason for you to stay here."

"No," Pam said.

"But your groceries."

"No," she said. "It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter."

Pam stood up and walked a few feet from the doe. She lit a cigarette and inhaled hard, quick puffs, one arm across her stomach, her eyes on the doe. The doe started writhing again and Pam threw down the cigarette and went back to the deer, cooing, rubbing until the doe calmed.

"With all these subdivisions, these animals don't have much place to go," Colhouer said.

"No," Pam said. "They don't."

"I've seen a lot more deer hit lately," he said.

"Me too," Pam said.

By now, it was almost 10 o'clock. The doe had been suffering for two hours. Pam wished someone could have ended her pain as soon as it happened. Colhouer could have shot her, but he wanted to wait until someone was there who would use the meat. He didn't want the deer to die for nothing.

"She's just about worn herself out," Pam said.

There were few cars on the road, and each set of headlights held the promise of delivering the person who would kill the deer.

Another deputy showed up and said he could slit the deer's throat, so she wouldn't be in pain anymore. But they decided to wait for the man in the black pickup.

The doe's front legs kicked more and she whipped her head. Pam held her down.

"Easy, easy," Pam said. "Shhhh. I know it hurts, I know. Shhhh."

The doe's front legs locked and her neck stretched back, stiff. Her breaths were shallow. The deputies talked to each other, not paying attention to Pam and the doe. Pam's hands never left the doe, rubbing her side and her neck. She whispered to her.

Then the doe's big, brown eyes went blank, and Pam couldn't feel her heartbeat anymore.

"She's gone," Pam said. She stroked her a few more times and then stood up. She waited for the man to come, but she did not stay to watch him cut up the deer. Pam drove home and put her groceries away and tried to go to sleep, but she couldn't.

She kept seeing the doe's face hit her window.

[Last modified August 21, 2006, 22:37:25]