Saint Francis and I have always had a special relationship. As a little girl I learned he watched over all the animals I loved.
Saint Francis was on my mind driving home one morning from my midnight shift at a retirement home. Highway 231, the hilly two-lane road between Wyandot and Seneca County, curved through fields of corn, soy beans and woods.
I’d seen it a hundred times, but my breath still caught as I rounded a bend and faced an explosion of fall colors overhead. In summer the rich green trees made a canopy of shade. In winter the snow made a Christmas wonderland. In spring the road came alive with new buds and flowers.
I wasn’t the only one who loved this stretch. Squirrels, opossum and raccoons walked this road too. And deer, my favorite. The animals made me love my commute all the more, but I couldn’t bear the idea of one darting out and getting hit. An accident with a deer could be fatal to me as well.
So each morning and night before I turned onto the highway from Sycamore Street, just after I passed the little wooden bridge over the creek, I said my special prayer: “Saint Francis, please bless and protect all the animals, big and small. Keep them away from the road I travel on today so that I don’t hurt them and they don’t hurt me.”
I’d never had a car accident. But my spotless record was attributed to more than just luck and careful driving. As I crossed the border into Wyandot County, I remembered a day years before. My husband, Brian, and I were driving the highway in my old Geo Metro. “Brian, slow down,” I said. “You never know what’s going to jump out.”
“I’m not going that fast,” he assured me. “I can stop.”
Saint Francis, I prayed, be extra watchful today.
“I thought I’d pick up some coal for the barbecue,” Brian said as he steered around a bend into the woods. The summer road turned shady. “I could get steaks at the—”
A herd of deer streaked out from the left side of the road. There was no time to stop. Brian jerked the wheel far to the right. Blood pounded in my ears, but I could hear the thunder of hooves on pavement.
All I could do was wait for the terrible impact I knew was coming….
But it didn’t come. The deer thundered into the woods behind us. Now the only sound was Brian’s hoarse breathing beside me. We sat on the side of the road, shaking.
“What just happened?” Brian asked. His face was white.
“They jumped over us,” I said. “They all jumped over the car.”
Brian looked at me sideways. “You said that goofy prayer, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It worked.”
It had worked, hadn’t it? I thought as I drove past the same spot going in the other direction. What else could have protected Brian and me that day? And what about that second time, I reminded myself. That memory was even more clear.
I was rushing into town for a meeting. My mind wasn’t on Saint Francis that night, but I said my prayer by the little bridge out of habit. I should have left earlier, I thought, speeding toward Seneca County. If I go the speed limit all the way, I just might make it.
Instead, my car slowed. I hadn’t touched the brake but the speedometer was dropping fast. I pushed down on the gas. Nothing. “Oh, of all the days!” I said. I coasted to a stop on the side of the road, dead. “What’s wrong with this thing?” I smacked the steering wheel with my hand.
That’s when something caught my eye. A fuzzy white glow just to the left of my car. It was about five feet tall, shaped like a person, but it wasn’t a man. And right beside it were five deer standing stock still, just inches from my car. I would have hit them if I hadn’t been stopped.
I pressed the gas pedal again. This time I moved forward. There was nothing wrong with my car. I looked in my rearview mirror. The white glow pulsated as if it were alive, then faded into the darkness. Only then, did the deer cross the road.”
“I didn’t hear a single thing anyone said in the meeting,” I told Brian that night. “I kept thinking about that glow. Was it Saint Francis? Was it an angel? Did I actually see a miracle? What was the truth?
“You’re the one who saw it,” said Brian. “What do you think?”
I couldn’t say for sure. Even now as I passed that little bridge I wondered. If only someone else had been with me, I thought. I needed a witness. But I was the only one who knew about the figure who protected me and the deer that day.
The next morning I had an early appointment. I left the house at sunrise. I couldn’t wait to get to the highway where the fields would be sparkling with morning dew. “Saint Francis, please bless and protect all the animals, big and small,” I said. “Keep them away from the road I travel on today so that I don’t hurt them and they don’t hurt me.”
I pulled onto Sycamore Street, approached the bridge and—“Oh, my!”
I rolled to a stop. There on the tiny bridge, not a foot away from my car, stood an eight-point buck!
I gazed up in awe at his antlers spreading like tree branches. The morning sun came out from behind a cloud and struck him as he looked out over the bridge like a king surveying his realm.
The buck turned his head. Our eyes locked. I could almost hear him thanking me for my prayers for him and his family.
He knows, I thought. He knows! This animal knew Saint Francis just as well as I did.
My deer friend leapt off into the woods beside the creek. I pulled my car back onto the highway. Never again would I wonder about the truth of this miracle road.
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