Nelk

This last weekend, we made a really quick trip to visit family in the city.

Now: Arizona is a fancy state. Outside my window is miles and miles of desert, interrupted briefly by a few distant plateaus and one dry river. Then an hour to my east and an hour to my north are thick pine forests and beautiful mountains. Beyond that, if you chance to travel further, you will find palm trees and citrus groves. This weekend we got the FULL experience. We drove to the palm trees from the desert by way of the pine trees. We’ve made the drive hundreds of times, and it is beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful, especially right after a good rain.
Lately, we haven’t had the good fortune to take the drive during daylight hours, so we’ve missed all the scenery.
But we didn’t miss out on EVERYTHING. When driving through heavily wooded areas, it is impossible to miss out on the the vast amounts of wildlife it holds. We didn’t miss the wildlife. In fact, we smacked it with our jeep.
Yes, sir, we smacked an elk.

At the risk of sounding a lot like Mrs. Bennett, I have to say: I have weak nerves. I always have had. After we hit the elk, the first thing I did was make sure my kids were okay. Then I tried to pull my phone up to make sure we had service, but I was shaking so bad I couldn’t. Maybe if my phone wasn’t a touch screen… but it is, so I was pretty much out of luck. After the big “THUD” we had on impact, my husband and I both had matchy-matchy thoughts (we’re SO united. har, har).
The jeep is toast.
There goes the paid-off jeep.

My husband climbed out into the cold night wearing all black. We were parked on the side of a busy highway. He was using what little light he had from the flashlight app he had installed on his cell phone, and I waited nervously for a damage report.
He couldn’t find anything. He couldn’t find a smash or a crack or a… anything at all. I made him put on my grey sweater before he went off looking for the elk, and I folded my arms to pray as my husband bounded across a highway in the pitch dark to look for an elk.
“Where’s dat donkey?” My son asked.
“It wasn’t a donkey,” I replied, “It was an elk.”
“Was that nelk scary?” He asked.
His cuteness soothed my nerves and made me smile.
“No, I think we scared the nelk more than it scared us,” I lied.

My husband came back with no report to offer. He couldn’t find the nelk, and we started back on the road, ever so carefully. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the car was riding a bit rougher, but nothing so rough that we were scared we were going to fall clean apart. So we picked up speed, and we drove into Palm Trees and Citrus Groves with no problems what-so-ever.
I asked my older brother (the one who took our pictures) to come and take a look at our car the next morning. Mike is an expert. Period. If you need anything done, he can do it. He’s amazing! He knows SO much about SO many things. He was nice enough to come and take a look at our jeep (which used to be his jeep) and the verdict?
The jeep was thrown out of alignment.
Isn’t that amazing?! It is a large sort of miracle. I mean, we SMACKED that nelk. It wasn’t like we grazed it or anything. We HIT it. It’s head made contact with the driver’s side mirror. The driver’s side mirror popped in and popped right back out.
All we have to show for it is a small dent on the driver’s side fender. Can you see it? Barely?

We also have elk hair stuck to our siding which I can’t help but love.

Checking everything over with brother Mike:
See my boy in his PJs? He’s holding his bows. They’re his constant companions these days. I took this before we met the nelk.

He always keeps one pink bow nearby because, he told me, it’s the Pink Panther bow. And then he sings, “dun dun dun duuuun….. dun dun dun duuuuunnnn….” He once sang the Pink Panther theme song to me while I cleaned the kitchen because he KNEW it would help me clean faster and more better.
Right after my husband made it back to our car safely and without any luck of finding the elk, we said a prayer of gratitude. We thanked Heavenly Father was watching so carefully over us. We then turned out gratitude to our 1996 mini Jeep tank and vowed never to part with her.

Years ago, my mother chanced to kick my other older brother’s shin. It broke her toe even though her toe was inside of her shoe. My brother’s shin showed no evidence of having been touched. My mom pulled out the camera and took a picture of her toe and then a picture of his shin for posterity. I thought about those pictures as we continued down the highway.
Somewhere out there is a nelk… with a broken toe.