Deb's dead.

Don't worry, Badsnake, it's not your Deb. My Deb didn't look even remotely like your wife.

First met Deb about this time three summers ago, when I got a call that an antelope had been hit on the Interstate and was still alive, lying alongside the road. Got good directions, for once. Right at the west interchange.

So I went out expecting the worst, and spotted the antelope right away. She was bedded on the slope below the highway, within the circle of the cloverleaf.

She was fine.

Gave me a look like "What? Go away, you bother me."

So I did. If you've read one of my early entries, you know there usually isn't any safe way to get an antelope herded off an interstate, especially at an extra wide interchange. At least, not without shutting down traffic.

She got herself on, she should know the way off.

She did.

I suspected she was thinking about fawning out in that cloverleaf, and I was right. Wife reported seeing fawns with her in the same spot a few days later.

Rather than crossing the highway, the doe made a habit of instead walking into town to feed and get water. And then back to her fawns. All that was in her way was a painted cattleguard. Actually a pretty good spot to keep a couple fawns, in one respect... no coyotes.

Like the typical small western town, the first building you encounter immediately after crossing the painted cattleguard is a bar. It has since changed hands, but it used to be "Deb's" bar. It has a high peaked roof visible from the highway, and Deb had her name painted on it in bright letters. If you look close, you can still see it.

Word has it that, in addition to the spirits in the bar, Deb also offered other attractions in the little room above the bar, under her painted roof. Wouldn't know about that.

But the antelope doe liked the weed patches around the bar, and so that became her name... Deb.

One of the game wardens received a call that summer about an antelope stuck on the Interstate at the west interchange, and relayed the call to me, asking me to check it out.

"No need, it's just Deb."

I expected to eventually see two little bloody smudges on the highway, from her fawns getting creamed, but it never happened. She and her two kids left peacefully and intact in the fall.

The next summer she was back, but on a different part of the cloverleaf. Same story, same success.

Spring of last year they started reconstruction of the interchange, changing our cloverlef into a diamond. No Deb, but we did have an antelope doe show up and spend the summer along the old highway, just on the other side of the Interstate, just outside the construction.

I never did pay attention to Deb's neck stripes. The red and white bands on the neck and brisket of pronghorn are variable, and you can quite often tell individuals by their stripes. But I'm sure that doe last year was Deb.

About a week ago, the wife came home after dark and complained to me about almost hitting an antelope that stood defiantly in the middle of the old highway, just before you cross under the Interstate. Like I'm supposed to go out and give them all lessons in street safety. Or paint a crosswalk on the road and stand there with a little sign.

But I'm sure it was Deb.

A few days later I was coming home on that road and saw the familiar red and white lump alongside the asphalt, so I stopped to check it out. A doe, been dead about a day or so. Teeth said she was at least four years old, more likely six to eight. Pretty successful for an antelope. Her fawns died with her, unborn.

I've expended some sorrow in a couple recent entries, but I want you to understand, this isn't one of them.

I enjoyed seeing Deb over the past few years. I am grateful that her choice of a secure fawning site happened to provide us with regular encounters with one of our desert ghosts. And I'm glad that it worked out well for her and her fawns, at least for three years.

All antelope die. Most die unpleasantly. Getting schmucked in the head and shoulders by a speeding vehicle is probably a pretty good way to go, considering the alternatives. And, yes, I'm sure she would have preferred to have waited. But if this was Deb, and I believe it was, she beat the odds by several years, and got off at least two pairs of twins in the past three years. Again, a success as far as antelope go.

There's a creek just a little west of where she is lying that is a usual haunt for some red foxes. I suspect they are already putting her to good use.