Deer Antler Causes Cathy Kates’ Flat Tire

It's 8p.  We're driving to Duluth from the Taste of Home Cooking Show at Black Bear Casino Resort.  Homie, my husband is behind me in the truck, because we drove separate.  Suddenly, I see the lights of  the SUV a short distance in front of me swerve uncontrollably and pull off to the side.  I slow down in time to see a huge deer down in the passing lane writhing in pain (poor honey).  I knew I wouldn't have time to call Homie on the cell, so I put my flashers on and hit the brakes so he'd know something was going on and to slow down.  Just as he was on the side of the deer, a mini-van blows past him in the passing lane and nails the deer at 75mph!Homie said he heard something hit what he thought was his windshield.  The van never stopped, never even slowed down, even after driving over the deer at 75!

Coming down Thompson Hill, I noticed that Homie's headlights were dim, so I called him.  At that moment, he noticed that he had an issue, what he thought was a flat tire.  He couldn't pull over due to the fact that the construction barrels were still up and had us down to one lane of traffic, so we got off the first exit which was Central Avenue and he made it into a parking lot.

As you can see by the first picture, he thought he had picked up a bone fragment from the deer.  Here's what he pulled out......

There's no question that Minnesota Nice still exists in the Northland.  So many super nice people came over and asked him we needed help when he was changing the tire and I was playing bejeweled on my phone.  (Hey, I asked, he said there was nothing I could do!)

It was a freak accident that's going to cost us a wad of money, BUT, I was lucky.  We had stopped together at the gas station in Scanlon and I had waited to let a car pull out of their parking spot in front of me, before I proceeded to leave.  Had I not done that, I might have been the one that hit the deer, and our costs would have been much worse.  Always try to find the good in a bad situation, it puts things in prospective.