I was driving out of Chestertown last Tuesday night on my way to Philadelphia, where I was to spend the next three days in meetings. The sun had just set, but there was still a bit of light in the sky. All of a sudden, a deer ran right across the road in front of my car, barely missing my bumper. I was feeling relieved when another deer appeared in the headlights. This time, I was not so lucky.

While I was waiting for the police to come, quite a few people stopped to chat. Several of them wanted to shoot the deer, which was not killed by the impact. Others wanted to claim the deer (after checking to make sure that I didn’t want it for myself). It was an exciting, social twenty minutes there by the side of the road. One fellow ended up shooting the deer with a gun he must have been carrying in his car. Another seemed disappointed to have missed the opportunity; he had sent his wife to fetch his gun from the house, but was foiled by the delay.

The guy at the body shop, where we took the car for an estimate, told us that we were lucky that some deer fur was stuck in the bumper. Apparently, this makes for a clearer case for the insurance adjuster.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that we’re currently without wheels. And so for the time being, Alden is picking up the slack.

She drove us all to the grocery store the other day, in a snowstorm, to boot.

Perhaps we’re foolish to put so much faith in someone so young and small, but she drives with a steely purposefulness.

I think we’re in good hands.

Yesterday, we moved back from Bob and Seiko’s house and are once again full-time barn dwellers.

Even without the car, we were able to make the two-block migration without too much trouble.

It’s good to be home again, now a square family instead of a triangular one (with apologies to the animals for being excluded from this calculation).

Kato continues to be ever more alert, though he still does seem to be a champion sleeper. We like both aspects of the little man, and are still inclined to keep him.