Last week Sheena had to work late and I had to be somewhere as well. With that, I dropped off the kids with Sheena’s mom in Pearland. From there, Sheena scooped up the kids after work and bought ’em home. The drive home goes through a semi-remote area off of Hwy 6. It’s developing, but not fully developed yet. In that patch of nothing, a “dog” darted in front of of Sheena car. It was dark so Sheena didn’t even see it coming until it was too late.
After a quick bump and thud, it was over in a second. Sheena called me describing the situation. I was on speaker phone, so once I said hello, before Sheena could say anything, I hear Layla in the background saying “we hit a dog!”
There was nothing else really to do, right? Is there a number to call about a hit dog on the road? She felt super bad about the whole situation, but really, what could she have done, right? She was fine and the kids were fine and she was still driving. The car showed no issues for the rest of the drive. Since she was close to home I advised to just get home and get the kids settled in. I would check out the car later that night… but my curiosity peaked.
After they got settled in at home I asked Sheena to send a quick picture of the bumper. This is what I got.
Ouch. That’s a lot worse than I expected. After thinking about it over the next few days and talking with people, I now think she probably hit a coyote… but who knows… I put “coyote” in the title for click bait… and to make us feel better about not hitting someone’s poor dog.
Saturday morning, I finally had some time to really assess the damage.
After being hit by the bumper, it must have bounced off the side of the car too. That is mud by the way… not blood.
Because of the hit, the bumper snapped in half, the clips ripped off and the inner liner of the wheel-well dropped as well.
Also, a portion of the grill was missing. Right next to the headlight, you can see that the fender got bent as well.
Pretty rough shape.
I dropped it off at Shalom to get repaired. I’ve used them before and I trust their work. The bumper was past repair or patchwork, so it was replaced with a brand new one. $1000 later and it looks brand new!
I definitely didn’t expect it to be $1k, but after shopping around a bit, that seemed to be the going rate. I didn’t burn too much time shopping around though because we needed the car back in rotation.
Lesson for the day: Accidents happen, so save money to handle repairs!
Sajan Abraham 