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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 43 |
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 THIS IS THE DEER YOU NEVER WANT TO SEE IN YOUR HEADLIGHTS! |
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Prof. Jarvis had never seen Paul Tyler cry before, not in all the years they'd lived on the same wooded lane in the Semiahmoo Resort on the coast near the Canadian border. But Paul was crying, all right--and over the death of a deer.
"It makes me so damned mad!" Paul sobbed. "I've done everything I can to convince drivers to slow down for the deer--and look at this!"
Jarvis had certainly seen enough of it by now--the broken body of a small doe, one foot badly mangled, a sharp broken bone protruding from the hide and one eye bloody, still dangling from its socket. He and Paul had been returning from lunch in White Rock, across the border, when they'd seen the poor animal struggling in the drainage ditch along Drayton Harbor Road. Paul had stopped the car, jumped out and held the deer's battered head in his arms until it finally died, weeping all the time.
"This must seem silly to you. Jarvis," Paul said, dabbing at his eyes. "But I've been feeding little Rosie for nearly 10 years. She's been bringing her new fawns to us every year, so I feel we've been nurturing a generation of her babies. She was a great little mother--and now look at her!"
Jarvis might have thought Paul's emotional reaction was silly four or five years ago. After all, Paul was a retired military officer who had led troops into combat in two different wars. He'd hardened his heart against the terrible human casualties he'd witnessed in order to maintain his grip on sanity--and now he was sobbing over the death of a deer?
But Jarvis had seen the amazing change that had come over Paul ever since he started caring for the dwindling colony of mule deer in the seaside development as the bulldozers ate up more and more of what once was a heavily forested peninsula at the north end of Puget Sound. This once grim-visaged, autocratic man had mellowed more each season until he now was a genial fellow, very popular with all his neighbors.
Paul and Jennie Tyler liked to invite neighbors over for cocktails in the late afternoon, showing off the deer families that regularly trotted boldly along the edge of the golf course to reach the tree-lined Tyler yard where Paul would hand-feed them apple slices and top up the pans of sunflower seeds he kept for them next to the little pond he maintained as their watering hole. Only the truly hard-hearted could keep from admiring the sight of this tough old soldier among his deer, talking baby-talk to them as they quietly padded up for their apple slices as he called out the names he and Jennie had given them.
There was "Betty Grable," a female
so named because of her long, shapely legs; "Baby Snooks,"
an impudent little rascal who seemed to "talk" with
little snorts;
"Bambino," a friendly and fearless male whose antlers
were still just mossy bumps on his head; "Elle Gazelle",
who earned her name because of the huge leaps she took as a yearling,
and many more with names Jarvis couldn't remember. "Rosie."
of course, had been called that because of her pink-tinged nose
that seemed to glow when moist. If she'd been a male, no doubt
the Tylers would have called her "Rudolph."
The transformation that tending the deer had brought to Paul Tyler was obvious even to him. He explained it this way when Jarvis teased him about it one day:
"The deer really have changed me. They're so gentle, so loving. Oh, sure, Jennie was sore at them at first because they ate all the roses she planted each year, but then we just started a patch of roses especially for them. They're absolutely harmless creatures that I think God put on Earth to serve as role models for us. Imagine how different this world would be if humans behaved more like deer."
Jarvis had seen that himself, maybe with just a little coaching from his old friend Paul. He noticed how caring the mothers were for their fawns and how the deer even cared for each other's fawns if a mother was killed by a car. The little males were more aggressive, but could be as gentle as the does. As yearlings they began to leave the family circle, searching for their own place in the life of the forest. But, of course, that put them in serious jeopardy almost immediately. If they wanted to range where they could find mates of their own, they'd soon come up against the major roadways, expressways and highways that blocked their paths to the forests in the foothills of the Cascades.
Though Jarvis didn't feed deer himself, he sided with Paul and many others who wanted to block more development of this once isolated and thickly forested enclave by the sea. He had joined in the fight to preserve what was left of the deers' environment and had pushed to get city and county government to establish wildlife corridors for the forest animals to migrate back to the hills where man had not yet totally despoiled the wilderness. They had little success. The developers rolled over them at every turn.
"You know what I wish?" Paul eventually asked Jarvis. "I wish deer had some way to fight back on their own, but I guess their speed and agility are their only means of defense against cars and trucks. The odds are so stacked against them that we're going to make them all extinct before long."
" Yes, I suppose so," said Jarvis, but he was suddenly lost in his own thoughts along that line.
Prof. Gavin Jarvis
had worked for years with the U.S. Dept. of Defense in their
weapons development program. Borrowed from Stanford University
in the 1970s, he had worked on most of the new systems involving
applied electronics, especially those involving mobile vehicles
in wartime. Now retired for more than a decade, he had successfully
used some of the systems he'd developed for the military in his
designs of animatronic toys and amusement park action figures.
None of his "toys" could be considered weapons, of
course, or he'd never have been allowed to become a millionaire
several times over turning his knowledge into commercial products.
His most celebrated device had been the remote-controlled brontosaurus he'd designed for Jurassic World, the big Florida amusement park. It could do more than 50 different things, all of them totally benign, like munching leaves off trees more than 40 feet high. You never woud have guessed the original engineering had been done for the Firestorm tank, the low-profile, lightweight assault vehicle that deflected blasts from every known anti-tank missile system and carried its own lethal missiles.
But Jarvis pulled those Jurassic World dinosaur designs out as soon as he returned home from the Tylers that night and began to look them over closely.
"I wonder..." he said to himself, sketching out some ideas quickly on a large pad of drawing paper.
Nearly seven weeks later, Paul Tyler received an email message from Gavin Jarvis that went like this: "Can you come over to my place tonight around 8? Better not bring Jennie. I have something 'special' I'd like you to see."
Paul was intrigued, but he wondered about the "male only" invitation. Was Jarvis going to show him something naughty he'd downloaded from the internet? Why else would he want him to leave Jennie home? That didn't sound much like Jarvis, of course, but Paul accepted the invitation and, rather than call Paul to ask what was going on, he just decided to let the old boy surprise him.
It turned out to be a much bigger surprise than he'd ever expected.
After Jarvis ushered him into his study and closed the door behind them, Paul immediately knew something quite unusual was going to be revealed to him that night. He couldn't help but notice the large object on Jarvis' work table. It looked like a sculpted metal model of a doe about two feet high. Next to it lay a sledge hammer.
"What's this, Gavin?" Paul asked. "Have you taken up ironworking in your old age? That looks like somebody's idea of our Rosie wearing a suit of armor."
"Not bad," said Jarvis with a chuckle. "And you're not far off either."
Jarvis then tapped a switch and the room lights went off as an overhead spotlight came on, illuminating the model deer. Jarvis picked up what looked like a remote control device, tapped another button and the model's eyes lighted up, glowing a bright red.
"I hope you don't mind the attempt at a theatrical effect," said Jarvis. "The red eyes could be any color. There are videocams mounted behind them. But I figured red looked a little...well, maybe meaner?"
"I'll say," Paul replied. "I'd say she looks like she might need an exorcist about now. So, what does she do, Gavin?"
Jarvis smiled and pointed to the sledge hammera, saying, "Pick that up, Paul, and give it a whack."
"What? And ruin a fine piece of work like this--your first work of art?"
"You won't ruin it, Paul. Seriously. Pick up the hammer and do your best to bash it to pieces."
"Well, all right," said Paul. "If that's what you want."
He picked up the sledge hammer and swung it like a baseball bat at the miniature metal deer, but the hammer bounced off the surface and nearly flew out of his hands. He tried again with the same lack of success. He let the heavy end of the sledge rest on the floor and leaned closer to look at the metal. There wasn't a scratch on it.
"Now try just one more time," Jarvis instructed him.
Again, Paul picked up the hammer, gathered his strength and prepared to give it one more mighty swing. But this time Jarvis tapped another button and something extraordinary happened: With a whirr, a set of antlers seemed to blossom out of the deer's head. They looked razor-sharp.
"What the..." Paul gasped. The heavy hammer paused in mid-air, just about to make contact, when the metal deer bounded forward about a foot, ducked its head and sliced the hammer off just above Paul's grip on the wooden handle. The heavy head of the hammer thudded to the floor, just missing Paul's feet.
Then the deer backed up to the center of the table and....growled a warning!
"A snarling deer?" said Paul. "What in hell have you concocted Jarvis? That thing damn nearly hacked my hands off!"
Jarvis laughed loudly at Paul, who had gone pale. "Not a chance, Paul," he said. "I don't mess around. This is a precision instrument. The only danger you were in was maybe winding up with a smashed toe when the head of that hammer fell."
Paul, who was still holding the end of the wooden handle, looked at it in astonishment. The cut had been clean and neat, as if it'd been made by a high-powered laser and not a buzzsaw or some bladed instrument.
When he got his breath, Paul asked again, "What have you concocted here? I hope you're not planning to sell that to Mattel or some other toy outfit. If so, the next time I'll see you will be on prison visitation day."
"No, no, no," said Jarvis. "We're going to be using this, not somebody's kids. Paul, I want you to meet Robodeer Jr."
As if on cue, the miniature metal deer dipped its deadly antlers toward Paul and executed what looked suspiciously like a curtsey.
"Okay, I'm impressed," said Paul, "but what do you mean about us using it. I'm getting a little worried about you, Gavin."
"And well you should be, Paul," Jarvis said with a little flourish, "especially after you see the grown-up version."
Another 10 months went by before Paul or anyone saw the ultimate outcome of the Jarvis Project. Jarvis swore Paul to secrecy and confided that the prototype he was building was going to cost in the neighborhood of $750,000 before it was finished, primarily for the special deflective coating of space-hardened alloy used to cover the steel surface of the robot deer and its ultra-sophisticated circuitry. Jarvis had nothing else he wanted to do wit his money, so he didn't mind the cost. He was doing all the assembling himself as well as the programming for the Robodeer--and admittted to himself that he'd never had more fun in his life.
On the night of that vivid demonstration of the miniature model, Jarvis had explained it all to Paul: He had been inspired by Paul's remarks about finding a way for the deer to fight back against motorists who refused to honor the posted speed signs and warnings to watch out for crossing deer. Jarvis said he thought it also might be nice if the deer had a "hero" to make a stand against bulldozers and earth graders that were destroying their habitat.
"We won't be putting Robodeer out there for long," said Jarvis. "We want him to throw a scare into the right people long enough to get some rezoning done and some speed laws enforced. Then we can retire him, hopefully still anonymous."
"That sounds good," Paul replied, "although I wouldn't mind sending him calling on some developers I know in the area."
One rainy night the following October, the first member of the unwary public made his acquaintance with Robodeer. His name was Chester Simmons and, though he just happened to be driving along Drayton Harbor Road at 11 PM at a high rate of speed, he might have been specially selected for the role he was about to play. Simmons was a real estate salesman who had just closed a deal to buy 10 acres of old forest land on Semiahmoo Point and was planning to build condominiums there, after first clearing the land of all trees, of course. Simmons also was a hunter and even had a deer's head on the wall of his office in nearby Ferndale. As he sped down the tree-lined road, his lights on high beam, he was listening to hip-hop with the volume cranked up high enough to frighten even distant owls out of their trees.
As his SUV rounded a curve, he suddenly saw what appeared to be a large buck deer in his headlights. He cranked the wheel rapidly, hoping to dodge the deer and save his $40,000-plus vehicle from a fortune in expensive body repairs. But as his wheel turned, so did the buck, right into his new path. In the micro-seconds before his head went through the windshield, Simmons thought sure he saw the deer's eyes glowing red as it lowered its head, literally aiming its antlers right at him.
The noise of the collision was heard all over the gated community of Semiahmoo. Some thought a freight train from Canada had gone off its tracks and crashed down into the Blaine Marina on the other side of Drayton Harbor. Some others thought a helicopter must have crashed into the Semiahmoo Inn on the spit of land separating Canada from the U.S.
But 70-year-old Nicole Vandenburg, who was out walking her Irish setter along the harbor road, actually saw what happened and told the Blaine police about it when they finally turned up at the scene, followed by an engine company from the closest district fire station on Blaine-Birch Bay Road.
"I heard the car coming real fast," she told them, "and pulled Mackenzie, my dog, out of the crosswalk in case that idiot didn't see us. That's when I saw this enormous deer stepping into the road. It walked real slow, like some kind of mechanical thing, and then it turned and faced the car. It was standing right in the middle of the road, like it was daring the car to run into him."
"And then what happened?" the patrolman asked.
Mrs. Vandenburg seemed to sort of fumble around for the right words and finally came up with this: "I think what happened is the car hit the deer and it was cut right in half."
"The deer was cut in half?" the officer asked. "But there isn't a trace of a deer anywhere out there."
"Not the deer," she said. "I mean the car was cut in half. The deer just stood there and the car seemed to just split into two parts and go all to pieces. It was the awfulest thing I've ever seen. Mackenzie howled like nothing I've ever heard before."
"But what happened to the deer?"
"Oh, the deer just walked away, back into the woods," she said.
As far as anyone knew, Nicole Vandenburg was not in the habit of getting drunk before taking her dog for a walk. Neither was she senile nor given to fancy story-telling. So, when she told The Bellingham Herald reporter that a deer had wrecked Chester Simmons' new SUV, put him in the hospital with a broken neck and severe facial cuts, then slowly walked back into the forest, quite a few readers actually believed her.
"The deer was as tall as the car, had glowing red eyes and was all glistening with raindrops like it was covered with metal instead of fur," she told the reporter.
The Herald headline writer dubbed it "The Deer in Armor," but the Seattle Times called it "Battledeer Galactica," which the Seattle TV stations all picked up. But when Paul Tyler wrote a letter to the editor of Blaine's weekly Northern Light, calling it Robodeer for the first time, the name stuck. Paul's letter hailed the accident as some kind of miracle event that, truth or fiction, certainly ought to be a warning to speeding motorists who constantly were running into deer.
"Running into a deer at high speed is likely to total your car anyway, even if its made of nothing but flesh, fur and bone," he wrote. "And if there really is a Robodeer out there, you want to be going real slow if you ever find that in your headlights!"
Even Paul and Gavin Jarvis assumed the "Robodeer" accident would blow over before anybody would take any corrective action. That's why they sent Robodeer out for a second appearance the following week. It was a brief one, but made headlines all over again. A bulldozer had been knocking down trees in the uplands when the driver felt a sudden impact off to the right and wondered what he'd hit with his tracks. Peering back along that side, he was stunned to see he hadn't hit something after all. In fact, "something" that looked like a giant metal deer had hit the dozer--and was slowly lifting the spinning track into the air. The driver jumped for it just as Robodeer overturned the huge machine, sending it on a rollicking tumble downhill, knocking over and flattening several construction company pickup trucks, a portable toilet and the foreman's shack before coming to a rest in the silt of the harbor.
ROBODEER STRIKES AGAIN! was one headline.
Another was: WHO CONTROLS THE ROBODEER?
That headline bothered Prof. Jarvis a little because he figured there weren't too many other people in the area who might be able to put something like Robodeer together in their spare time. It shouldn't take the cops long to come up with his name.
But the forces of good seemed to be gathering around the mystery of Robodeer at a surprising rate. Two western Washington Indian tribes already were claiming The Robodeer was an ancient tribal spirit that had taken the form of a deer to lead them and their white allies to overthrow the evil despoilers of the forests, not counting, of course, the ones who were building casinos for them on reservation land. Several environmental organizations, after close votes, decided to take a ride on the Robodeer publicity to underscore their own complaints against the over-development of the area.
By the time Robodeer had made its third appearance, attacking a speeding sports car on the narrow Semiahmoo spit, ripping its canvas top completely off and sending the little vehicle spinning into the bay, the tide was turning against development bigtime. A series of newspaper reports on the plight of the mule deer softened many hearts and voters, tired of increasing traffic and watching condos spring up behind every tree, began to holler for change at every government meeting in the county. Editorials in the Seattle papers picked up the issue and started calling for change throughout western Washington, where the salmon runs already were endangered and the orca killer whale population in Puget Sound was diminishing sharply.
In early February, Paul Tyler and Prof. Jarvis quietly celebrated the passage of laws in their county that would establish nature corridors from the hills to the sea in nearly every community. The Semiahmoo Resort had agreed to put in speed bumps on the principal roads and install cameras to catch speeders. "Love A Deer" posters were going up everywhere and a statue of the late Rosie was commissioned by the City of Blaine, although there was some confusion about who was going to pay for it.
In the large upstairs room over the four-car garage at Prof. Jarvis' home, Paul and the Professor met for drinks in front of the warm fireplace. Jarvis had dismantled the power-pulley system he had built to lift Robodeer in through the second story double doors that faced the street. Now nobody could suspect this comfortable upstairs loft, now reached only by way of a narrow staircase, had once been the "hideout" of the robot deer that terrorized the community for nearly a year.
"Well, we did it, Paul, didn't we?" said Jarvis as they raised their glasses in a toast.
"You mean, YOU did it, Gavin," Paul replied. "You did it and you didn't leave a clue behind to ever implicate us in this campaign. I toast you, my dear friend."
"No, no," Jarvis protested. "I think we really should lift our glasses to our d-e-e-r friend over there, don't you?"
With his glass, he motioned toward the wall where the only surviving part of The Robodeer looked down upon them--the detached metal head, its glossy surface now covered quite expertly with fake fur and its razor-sharp antlers masked by artificial bone. Unless you looked real closely, it could pass for any hunter's trophy head.
"Here's to Robodeer!" they said in unison. "May he rest in peace at last!"
And somehow, whether Jarvis had tapped
a button or not, the eyes of the mounted deer's head suddenly
seemed to glow red for one last time. Some might even say it
had winked.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The illustration is an enhanced version of a drawing from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Oct. 29, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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