I started noticing these signs warning you for deer jumping on the highway. That kind of reminded me of a warning I once heard about  a deer actually hitting a car. Deer dead but car also total loss. Would Spanish insurances cover the damage? I mean my rental car looked quite new and quite expensive. What if a deer would hit this car?

When I walked into a restaurant at the side of the road a little later, still fretting about the insurance, the guy at the table next to me started chatting me up and since he actually spoke Dutch quite well, I decided to ask him about the insurance and the deer.

And he turned out to have an extraordinary story to tell which began with the fact that he had learned Dutch while doing business in Holland because of deer hitting cars. And no nothing to do with the business of insurance.

When he was young a deer did actually hit his car and died in the process. And even though the deer had not died of his fault, he had to do penance, the law considering deer weaker than a car.

And so the judge sent him to a big forest to take care of the deer in the forest for many years. While working with the deer in the forest he discovered the attraction carlights on the highway had for deer. So he started training them to do the opposite and stay away from carlights. When the deer understood the value of his lessons, they decided to share a secret with him. They took him to a dark place almost in the middle of the forest and there hidden under a thousand year old oak they  showed him a tree that when tapped in the right way would  give way to a juice similar to rubber if not much stronger and much more flexible. With that juice he had actually managed to manufacture something looking a bit like antlers that he could attach to each four sides of his car. Thanks to the form it could catch a deer before it would hit the car and thanks to the flexibility it would have it bounce back alive into  the forest, thus at the same time saving its life and the car.

SP he decided to give on the idea of becoming a doctor, and decided to go into the of preventing. He went and studied chemistry and discovered the formula for this special ‘rubber’. When I did not immediately understand he got impatient and said:

“Not many deer get hurt by cars but lots of other animals including humans ones do. So I think every car should wear my protection antlers and that is how I got into contact with Nedcar in the Netherlands. They show interest and so does the Dutch government. Next step: pilot.