Back in the '90's one of the "city boys" on a local police department happened across a "road kill". The deer wasn't too badly damaged on the outside. It seems the large doe had tried to jump over the hood of an approaching car, as the doe was crossing the paved roadway. As it completed its leap, the back legs were hit by the windshield of the car, doing no damage to the vehicle, but sending the doe careening out of control onto the ground. There the doe lay when the officer happened upon the motorist and the doe, in the early light of dawn. The officer loaded the "fresh venison" into the back of his cruiser (they were all vinyl in the back seat area, back then), and asked for another officer to bring him a "road kill tag", which Maryland used back in those days. The fellow officer gave the first officer the tag, and didn't really look at the doe, since she was already loaded up inside the officer's cruiser. The first officer and his doe departed for home as it was shift change, and his midnight shift was done
Minutes later the oncoming shift heard the officer with the roadkill radioing for help, and yelling so loud they could barely understand his message. When backup arrived, one of the rear, side windows was shattered in the officer's cruiser, and there was some blood on the door below the shattered window. When asked what happened, the officer explained,
"I loaded a dead deer from a roadkill into the back of my cruiser. THEN, the deer came back to life, started thrashing around in my back seat until she stood up, and went right through the side window."
An officer who had arrived as backup, who was a country-boy and a hunter asked, "Was the dead deer's eyes closed when you loaded it into your car?"
"Of course its eyes were closed. It was dead!"
The country-boy officer laughed, and said, "When deer are dead their eyes stay open wide"
"They do?"
"Yep..., you put a knocked-out deer into your car, and from the looks of it, she wasn't too badly hurt when she came-to. Probably cut herself a little bit on the window glass as she jumped out."
The paperwork the officer needed to complete, to explain how the window got smashed was apparently EPIC.....
LD