I neglected to mention that I saw the aftermath of this mornings excitement at HSC. Somehow a deer managed to break into the Health Sciences Center this morning. When Michael dropped me off at 8, the security guard warned of “a deer in the mammogram center.” When we pulled up to the building there were crowds lining the sidewalk in front of the green space between the Pavilion entrance and Family Medicine. When I got out of the car I noticed the four security guards standing in the green space, and then I noticed the broken window they were all staring at.

I considered stopping to see if I could see anything else, but decided there were enough people standing around already, and so settled for walking slowly into the building. As I went into the Pailion entrance, I could see two broken windows in the Breast Care Center–and by broken I don’t mean cracked or shattered, but big gaping holes that looked like something deer sized had gone through the pane. (Mind you, these are wall-sized panes of thick glass that I can’t imagine something going through once, no less three times.)

And then I was down the hallway and walking past the crowds of people huddled in small groups discussing what they’d just heard.

When Tom, the maintenance man who checks his e-mail in the lab, came in, he had some more details: somehow the deer had gotten up by the building, and had gotten startled or frightened and started going through windows. The deer was injured so badly it had to be put down, which, considering the broken windows, was not a surprise. When Michael came up for lunch the security guard said 5 windows were broken, but we could only find three boarded up and not a shard of glass to be seen. (Pretty quick they were I must say.)

So I missed everything, which doesn’t make for good story telling, but the last thing the security guards needed was one more person standing around in danger of getting hurt. Sensibility over excitement.

The TV crew wasn’t there until 5–I saw them standing in the green space, filming the boaded up windows. Hardly seemed worth the trip.

The only other thing was that when Kim and I walk at lunch, we walk along the outside of the building. As we were walking past the Cancer Center between HSC and Ruby, I suddenly noticed that the ground was covered in reddish dots. Lots of them. As if a creature bleeding from multiple cuts had come that way. The trail stopped suddenly, and not in a large smear, but as if the deer had gotten confused by the corner and run back the way it had come.

I don’t know if it was blood on the ground, and I don’t know if the deer even made it down to the cancer center, but it seeing those drops–covering the sidewalk for a third the length of the building–that somehow made the whole thing seem even more real than the broken windows. And somehow made it all the more depressing. Imagining how a wounded and frightened animal came careening down the hard and unfamiliar walk, to be even more confused by strange walls blocking its path, surrounded by strange creatures blocking its way wherever it went. What a terrible way for any creature to die.