Editor’s Note: Katie Ryan-Anderson, wrote a guest blog for momaha.

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My house phone rang at 10 o’clock last night, the neighbor (who lives four miles away) had noticed a deer on the road. A car had hit it, but it wasn’t dead. She called her husband to shoot it, then called us to see if we wanted it.

Before I could respond with “Why?”…

“YES!” responded my excited husband. Unearthing himself from the warm covers of our bed and dressing in his finest deer-gutting attire, (complete with his attach-to-the-pants knife holster) he planned to retrieve poor Bambi’s sister, hang her upside down and butcher her flesh for future meals.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” he said to me, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken and still hadn’t comprehended what all this fuss was about. “She just has some broken ribs. It will save money on groceries.”

Now, I clip coupons, exploit my email address for sample-size freebies and fight with cashiers over 35 cents. But feed my family roadkill?

Half an hour later my husband returned, this time, sans the bloody fingerprints and grocery bag filled with doe heart and tenderloin as he had during hunting season.

“Someone already got her,” he said. “The person who hit her probably.”

I laughed until I was dehydrated from crying so much. In the country, car-deer remains are like a Black Friday doorbuster: get there late and the goods could be gone.

Katie Ryan-Anderson lives and works in North Dakota with her husband, son and second baby due in December. She grew up in Omaha where she attended high school and college.

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