I experienced my first deer-automobile collision early Friday evening. I don't like driving on the Taconic State Parkway. It's dangerous and haunted by tragedy. Built in 1929 and finally completed in 1963, it is winding and poorly lit -- a country road passing for a freeway. I prefer the Palisades, but didn't want to cross the river. In fact, I was making very good time and ahead of schedule to meet B. in Brooklyn.

Fortunately it wasn't my rental car. The deer walked right out in front of a new Jeep cruising up alongside me to my right at 60 MPHs. The sun had just set. In slow motion (but of course all within seconds), the illuminated animal statue went down like a bowling pin under the Jeep's grill. It ricocheted under the next car, then skidded rump-first toward my right headlight.

Against all common sense and my better judgment, I slammed on the brakes. Despite my prior experience with roadway collisions (I've had two, the last one totaling my Civic and laying me up for a time), I had no presence of mind and no heart to hit the deer again. In the half-second I slowed to a near halt, the speeding car to my right split the corpse in half. I risked my own life and probably other lives around me, and watched the slaughter like it was a movie. I was frozen like that deer and in as much danger.

Just as quickly, I came to my senses and resumed speed. I watched the Jeep pull over to the shoulder and followed it. Feeling my own racing heartbeat and pumping adrenaline, I could only imagine the other driver's state of mind. She was a college kid. As I walked up to the passenger side I could see her slumped over her laundry bag full of newly-washed clothes, crying hysterically. Her car was fine, she was a mess.

She rolled down her window and let me take her hand. We stayed there talking, helping each other breathe again. Choking, she said she had already had a very bad day. I told her that this could have been much, much worse and that she was lucky. That the deer could have come up into her windshield, or we both could have caused a pile-up. I listened to myself rationalize with her, while my heart slowed down to a more normal pace. When I had said all I could think of to make either one of us feel even slightly better, we said our good-byes. She thanked me and rolled up her window to call her father. I walked back to my car and made my own phone call. By this time road patrol had arrived and, by flare-light, removed the remaining bits of carcass from the road.

My brain was on fire as I headed into the city. I was so angry at the animal for not being smart enough to turn around and run away. It had only just stepped onto the pavement and had time to save itself. I was just as upset with myself for being irresponsible behind the wheel. I guess those talking cartoon animals really got the best of me.

Late last night, in the safety of my own home, I remembered that I had an illustrated hardcover edition of Bambi. The original story, written by Felix Salten in 1929, is brutally honest and filled with death. Of course we all know the fate of Bambi's mother, but many woodland creatures meet their maker in horrible, torturous ways. Wounded as a fawn, Bambi's childhood friend Gobo is saved by a hunter ("He") and later returned to the woods, only to be shot dead as an adult. Gobo's naive faith in humans causes him to be careless when the entire group is confronted by hunters:

Gobo lifted his head again feebly with a writhing motion, beat convulsively with his hoofs and then lay still. With a crackling, snapping and rustling He parted the bushes and stepped out. Marena saw Him from quite near. She slunk slowly back, disappearing through the nearest bushes, and hastened to Bambi and Faline. She looked back once again and saw how He was bending over and seizing the wounded deer. Then they heard Gobo's wailing death shriek.

This is not the Disney movie.

Bambi later comes to understand Gobo's folly, at the aid of the wise old stag (Bambi's father, although he doesn't know it) when they come across a dying hunter who has been shot:

"Do you see, Bambi," the old stag went on, "do you see how He's lying there dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn't all powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn't come from Him. He isn't above us. He's just the same as we are are. He has the same fears, the same needs and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then He lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see Him now."

There was a silence.

"Do you understand me, Bambi?" asked the old stag.

"I think so," Bambi said in a whisper.

"Then speak," the old stag commanded.

Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, "There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him."

"Now I can go," said the old stag.