by Alex Brooks
Jamie Meehan was riding his bike from his family’s camp at Taconic Lake over to the Grafton Lakes State Park. Halfway across Steve O’Dell Road he saw a deer in the bushes by the side of the road.[private] Thinking the deer would either stay put or run away, he continued on, and to his great surprise the deer jumped in one great leap over a bush and landed on him. Both he and the deer hit the ground, and the deer scrambled to its feet first and retreated into the bushes. Meehan managed to get back up on his feet.
His bike was not damaged, but he was feeling “foggy,” his left eye was gashed, and he said, “there was a lot of blood. Despite probably having a concussion and feeling quite woozy, Meehan managed to ride his bike on adrenaline back to his camp at Taconic Lake. He showered and tried to clean himself up, but when his wife saw him, she screamed.
She took him to ask EMT Joe Allain if he should go to the emergency room, and Allain said yes. He spent two and a half hours at the Bennington Hospital emergency room, where they cleaned him up, stitched up his eye, and checked him for concussion symptoms.
Meehan said he couldn’t do much of anything for about a week, and it took a month or more for his injuries to heal.
Meehan professes himself no expert on deer psychology. He said he made eye contact with the deer just prior to the incident, so he doesn’t think the collision was inadvertant. It was a female deer, perhaps 150 to 170 pounds, he estimates. He thinks he saw a fawn back in the bushes, which might have been the motivation for attacking rather than fleeing when the deer panicked.[/private]