Creative Writing: A Buck on a Median

There he was; standing motionless on the narrow strip of wooded median, carefully scanning the high speed traffic whizzing by on both sides of him. He was a young buck, probably a two or three "pointer". He was decently sized and seemed to have weathered the long and harsh winter without too much difficulty. I was driving one of those cars whizzing by, on my way to work. Catching a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, it startled me to see him standing so tall and proud. In fact, at first, he seemed so out of place on that median that I thought that it might be a prank. Perhaps it was a statue placed there as a gag by some college fraternity. But as I got closer I saw that it was no statue. It was a living, young male deer.

He appeared more alert than afraid. He seemed to be actually calculating the speed of the traffic, looking for a break when he could make a mad dash off that narrow strip and into the safety of the woods that lay a terrifying two lanes of deadly traffic away. I remember thinking, "oh, no, he'll never make it". I've seen the terrible consequences of young deer trying to negotiate their way across that deadly ribbon of asphalt in an attempt to get from one section of woods to the other. Their mangled corpses littering the sides of the highway are evidence of their many failures. I hoped that he wouldn't be another one. Because of his alertness, though, at least he had a chance.

As I sped by, in addition to my concern, I felt another emotion; frustration. As much as I may have wanted to, there was absolutely nothing I could do to aid him with his predicament. Could I pull my car across the highway, blocking the other cars, creating a safe passage to the woods for him? Impossible. No. There was nothing that I could do. I would have to leave him to his fate.

This led me to think of this incident as a metaphor for so many young "bucks" in our society. Just like this young deer, many of our young men find themselves stranded on a median, confronted with life threatening decisions. Do you stay put? Do you run left or right? When do you run? How did you get there in the first place? Just as with that young buck, we cannot answer these questions for them. We cannot lead them to safety. We can only hope that they make reasonable, rational choices. The rest must be left to fate.

Tomorrow, when I drive the same stretch of road, I intend to look very closely to see if that young buck made it to the safety of the woods. Hopefully, fate smiled upon him and he's doing what he was born to do; chasing does, deep in the safe, vernal woods.