My Grandfather and His Car VS. a Mountain Lion and Deer

My Grandpa just emailed a story of his on the road encounter with a deer and a mountain lion. Nice story and I’m glad he’s OK.

Saturday January 6th 2007 10PM By Joe Spiezio

I’m on Highway 29, between Calistoga and Middletown returning from Santa Rosa. I’m going over Mt. St Helena cruising at 45 MPH.

Out of nowhere, There are two loud thuds against the passenger side of the car, and I get a glimpse of objects flying into the embankment. Fuck!

There are no other vehicles on the road. I stop and go back to the point of impact. There I find two dead animals! A deer and a mountain lion! Amazing!

The only thing I can surmise is that the deer is being pursued by the mountain lion at high speed and leaps off the embankment onto the road at the exact moment I’m passing. The only thing the lion is thinking about is the deer! The impact took place in back of the headlights, so I never saw a thing till after the impact!

I was so pissed off when I saw the damage to the car that I considered cutting the hearts out of the animals, and having them for breakfast! Then, I thought better of that idea as I saw the fleas jumping off of the bodies. Scary Huh?

So today, I just finished spending four hours beating on sheet metal, the fender primarily, so that I could get the door to open and close. I was finally successful. The door is beat up but works fine, including the operation of the window.

Last week I had to install a new battery! $89.00. The next day I got caught in a rain storm and the wipers wouldn’t work! The circuit was good, but the motor was shot! I checked with Ford and they wanted $389.00 to install a new one! Now that the car is wrecked, I doubt I’ll have that done.

The amazing thing about this car is that it runs very well even with 256,000 miles! I’m going to keep driving it whenever it’s not raining. When it no longer runs, I’ll junk it! I paid $ 3800.00 for it 11 years ago, so how can I complain?