Oh, deer!

Oh, deer!

Main Street’s undull moments

Although the teenagers of our community will surely disagree, I contend that there is always something interesting taking place on Main Street in Viroqua. The odd and obscure happenings here in town bring to mind the Dr. Seuss book (his first actually), And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. For those unfamiliar with the book, it is the tale of young Marco, whose daily walk home from school is so drearily uneventful that he concocts an over-thetop and fanciful tale of the sights that he sees on Mulberry Street. Marco should be so lucky as to live here in Viroqua, for on our own Main Street, within a span of a week, I witnessed both a 60-tractor parade and an elderly man hauling an impressively large cross bearing the message, “Jesus Saves.” No imagination necessary. These events were simply there for the taking.

It sometimes takes a fresh perspective to appreciate the excitement of our town. Just recently, my parents were here in Viroqua spending the month of May in what they refer to as their “city house.” So charmed by Viroqua were my parents that upon my father’s retirement, they purchased a tiny house on Terhune to accommodate extended stays here in the Driftless region. Compared to their primary residence in rural North Georgia, Viroqua is quite the metropolis boasting three traffic lights as well as the bustling weekly farmers’ market just steps away from their front door.

Mother’s Day here in Viroqua was certainly quiet with hardly a car on the road late in the day. My own mother and I whiled away the better part of the afternoon at Bonnie’s Flea Market and were just returning home when we encountered both a police car and a fire truck parked in front of my parents’ house.

Just as I was teasing my mom about leaving the coffeepot on, we spied the body in the road. It was a deer. A deer and what looked like about 200 gallons of blood running freely down the street.

If I could just pause and emphasize the irony of this situation (and it is here where my hunter readership increases exponentially): At my mom’s house in North Georgia, she has, on any given day, upwards of 20 deer that mill about in her front yard, feasting on the corn she throws out for them. It’s all deer, all the time. You could say that my mother comes to Viroqua seeking respite from all that nature. And so I find it odd that here on Mother’s Day, a Viroqua deer picks the street in front of my parent’s “city house” as its final resting place. I park the car and my mom, the less squeamish of our mother/daughter duo, walks right up to the scene of carnage and proceeds to chat up the emergency personnel. I instigate a casual call to my 14-year-old daughter Nora, who is just right down the street at home, and invite her up for a little late afternoon snack and visit with her grandmother. Oh...and could she bring my camera along as well? “Mom!” Nora exclaims, horrified, “ You are not going to take a picture of that dead deer, are you?” As it turns out, only moments before, my poor daughter was out on a casual stroll just as a police officer was shooting the deer there on Terhune. Nora was completely traumatized. But with it being my day and all, I insist that she bring the camera, because, well, that’s just the kind of mother I am.

Meanwhile, my own mother has gotten the skinny on the situation. It appears that this poor deer crashed through a window of a Main Street business and had made it to Terhune before collapsing. She was still alive but bleeding out from a severed artery when the police arrived and put her out of her misery. Curious as to which business was involved, my mother and I only had to follow the trail of blood down Main Street to the Thrivent Financial storefront next to Gary’s Rock Shop. My. Good. Word. It is simply amazing to see the havoc one deer can wreak on an office space. The front window was completely smashed through, in striking juxtaposition with a sign that read, “PROTECT YOUR FUTURE.”

The interior was a study in shattered glass, loose papers, and blood. We could almost feel the panic still lingering in the space. Main Street was nearly deserted, and with the event being so fresh that neither police nor property owners had yet made it to the scene, we had ample opportunity to gape and snap photos, all from the sidewalk, of course. Taking notice of a printer situated within easy reach of the sidewalk, my mom observed that if this were anywhere but Viroqua the printer would surely have been looted. What she didn’t know was that only a week prior, her own daughter had been so desperate for a working printer that, even with its covering of deer hair and blood, that HP DeskJet would have been mighty hard to resist. I have to thank the recent sale at Best Buy for keeping me an honest woman.

Seeing everything there was to see at Thrivent, we ventured back up to Terhune. The blood had been hosed away by the firemen and Viroqua’s finest were still milling about the scene. My mom went back out to the street and, animal lover that she is, I am certain she gave the poor deer a small silent send-off. A truck and trailer arrived to carry the deer away and so, with photos snapped and prayers uttered, there was nothing left to do but retire indoors for a Mother’s Day glass of wine. By the time we settled in with our glasses of Pinot Noir, all evidence of the event—police, firemen, deer, and blood—had vanished, and it appeared to be just another sleepy Sunday afternoon in Viroqua. By Monday, most people seeing the boarded up window on Main Street would have no idea of the drama surrounding it; drama resulting in a Mother’s Day shooting in the streets of Viroqua!

Yes, there is always something happening on Main Street, Viroqua. It’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. For some odd reason, I find that I usually am.

After 10 years in Viroqua, Leigh Anders continues to find small town living simply fascinating.