Cruising down the Willits end of the Willits Grade one Tuesday evening back when the AVA was a newspaper printed on newsprint at about 6:30pm , traveling in the slow lane at a leisurely, lawful 60mph in my battered 2004 Prius, I was startled out of whatever tedious County mismanagement-inspired reverie was reverberating off the walls of my skull when I hit something, something big, something I feared might be alive, something I instantly feared I might have killed.
Had some disoriented transient made a sudden dash across 101 and I, an old-fashioned liberal, had run him over? Or had I merely hit a deer, a kind of rite of passage for rural motorists. Drive enough country miles and eventually you’ll hit a wild thing.
The Editor, who claims to be a three-deer man, said he'd also had a buzzard crash through his windshield. In the world weary voice he adopts when he's passing out suspect advice, “Son, drive right through 'em when you hit something. Whatever you do, don't swerve. People die when they swerve.” But the instant I hit whatever the hell I hit, I remember thinking, “I wonder how many people know that the official plural of Prius is Prii (Pri-i)?”
I hadn't seen anything in the roadway. There was a light rain and the reflections off Highway 101 in that area at that time of night make the road surface almost invisible at times. As a Senior Citizen, I won't pretend my hawk-eyed vision and lightning reflexes are what they once were, but all I saw was a vehicle one or two car lengths ahead in the fast lane. I quickly assumed I’d somehow hit a big rock or dirt clump, and silently cursed Caltrans. Or maybe I'd hit a dead animal, some kind of bulky half-dead roadkill, and I cursed Caltrans and the CHP for not keeping 101 free of all obstacles, including hippies protesting the Willits Bypass at the time.
I knew for sure I was screwed for major repairs. I should explain that I do not fetishize my transportation. If it reliably gets me there, I could care less what the transportation looks like. But we all know that nobody actually fixes anything anymore. They just order up a new parts and you pay thousands of dollars for them. I thought about going to a backyard Mexican Boonville body repair guy I happen to know. I knew he could pound out enough dents to make the thing driveable if anybody could.
What I really feared was being stranded. I wasn't driving to Willits for the pure delight of it on a frigid winter's night, I had the AVA in my care, the 12 page flats I was carrying to Printing X-press in Willits, America's last newspaper on its wato Mendocino County's last web press. I could not, would not be deterred from my mission! I still remember the morning years ago when Judi Bari, Naomi Wagner and their roving posse of dwarf bully girls briefly hijacked the paper on some silly see-through politically correct pretext. Never again!
I drove on. My Prius was not disabled. Wounded, disfigured perhaps, it carried me on down into Willits and the fuel pumps at Willits Safeway where I stopped for gas and a look-see. No sooner had I pulled up to the pumps than a slender, graying middle-aged man in a dark sedan drove up behind me and asked, “Are you all right?” “Um, yes…” I replied, tentatively, mindful that one engages strangers anymore at one's peril. My new friend said, “Well, you just ran over a mountain lion.”
Marone! I love mountain lions (unless being attacked, of course)! I'd rather kill myself than one of God's greatest creatures. Not that I've ever seen one outside a zoo, but what kind of psycho would want to run over such grace and beauty?
My gas pump informant told he'd seen the lion streak across the highway right in front of him, left to right. “I think I may have nicked him with my right bumper,” he added. We looked at the front end of his car where there was indeed a fresh dent in his right bumper. Somehow the first bump from his car must have jolted the lion into a position of full-body vulnerability in front of me. I hit him with my left front bumper and ran over him with both driver’s side wheels. There were several obvious dents in my bumper and my hood. The bumper was partially dislodged but still more or less in place; the front grill was broken and loose but still attached. There was no fur or telltale blood.
After the print run, the car ran okay. I drove back to Boonville, mission accomplished, saddened that an endangered species had perhaps taken another loss. On my way back to Boonville, I scanned the roadsides for my victim. I didn't see him, and I'm going to assume he lives on. On Wednesday I made an appointment with the Ukiah Prius dealer to have the front end looked after. Sure enough, I'd be out two grand.
Roadkill reminds me of my three plus years living at various places around Philo from 1971 to 75. I was there doing alternate service at Clearwater Ranch. Someone told me, not sure how accurate, that in this period before the vineyards were producing much, Mendocino County was one of the poorest in CA and the one with the most deer. At one very nice location I lived in a cabin in a small redwood grove, rented for $35 a month from Robin Bloyd. Next to the cabin in the grove was an open-air screened meat safe where roadkill hung to cure, mostly venison. The roadkill was collected, typically in the mornings from rt 128. Memories.