There was a sudden crash to his side—so fast he hadn’t heard any preliminary movement—and a whitetail doe flew out of the brush to his right. She was a full eight feet in the air when she left the brush and billowing from her eyes were clouds of something that resembled smoke. Later, when he had time to think, he decided that flies and mosquitos were attacking her eyes, and she was momentarily blinded. She was trying to make the water, where she could put her head under and clear away the bugs. She landed almost exactly in the center of the canoe, nearly in Brian’s lap. And she wanted out. Brian had read about a man who had accidentally hit a buck with his station wagon. The deer was knocked sideways and lay still in the ditch. The man stopped. Thinking the deer was dead, and not wanting to waste the meat, he put the deer in the back of the station wagon. He’d gone about four miles when the deer, which was only stunned, came back to life.
