Many years ago I drove a sporty little mercury Capri. It had a 302 v8 with the fake hood scoop. Anyway, at that time we were a growing family of three. Everyone else was asleep, driving south on I-25 out of Pueblo Colorado. The ridges from the Rocky mountains ran east and the highway dipped down into a broad valley. It was early morning, the pavement was dry, and no-one was on the road. The speedometer read 75 mph. As we crossed the valley some thin spotty fog drifted by. The thought came up, slow down. But being determined to make good time, the gas peddle didn't move. Suddenly the fog thickened, still patchy, but dense. A sense of heightened awareness swept over me. Still the speedometer held. Then it happened, the rear-ends of three full grown elk appeared, just leaving our lane and moving left. I lifted my foot and started to steer right, but froze. Several more elk heads came out of the fog on the right as they came onto the shoulder of our lane. They all whipped by at 75mph. I slammed on the brakes. My wife jerked awake. "What's wrong?" Being a good republican I thought, "I almost killed us." If 600 pounds of elk had come through the windshield, we would have all died instantly.
Was it random chance, fate, divine intervention? It was all of the above, and then some. Even some sort of weird destiny.
North American Elk
If Spock had been sitting in the back seat he would have said, "captain, our probability of survival was one in ..."
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