I always thought the worst thing you can hit on a mountain road is a deer. Now I know sometimes the deer is the one trying to save you from driving past.

It was one of those perfect sunny mornings: windows down, music low, pine smell everywhere. I was coming around a bend when a deer suddenly leapt onto the asphalt and froze right in front of me.

I slammed the brakes so hard my seatbelt cut into my chest. Tires screeched, my heart went into my throat… and the car stopped barely a few meters from him.

He didn’t run.

He just stood there, sides heaving, legs trembling. At first I thought he was just stunned. Then I saw it.

Around his neck, like a black stone collar, was a car tire.

Not just hanging loosely. It was jammed around his neck and chest, digging into his fur. His coat was slick with sweat. This wasn’t some funny “oops he got stuck” moment. This was wrong.

I got out slowly, hands raised like I was approaching a scared child. I cut a plastic bottle in half, filled it with water from my car, and set it in front of him. When he tried to lower his head to drink, he made this short, broken sound that I will never forget.

Fresh blood appeared along the edge of the tire.

Inside the rubber, a steel belt had broken through and was now stabbing into his neck every time he moved. That’s when I understood: he hadn’t jumped in front of my car by accident. He was desperate.

I tried to grab the tire and pull it up, thinking maybe I could slide it over his head. One shake of his antlers threw me onto the asphalt. His antlers were too wide and branched. That tire wasn’t going anywhere.

My hands were shaking when I called wildlife rescue.

“Stay with him,” the dispatcher said. “Help is on the way.”

So I did. For twenty of the longest minutes of my life, I just stood there on that empty road, talking softly to a wild animal who could easily kill me, but instead just… watched me. He didn’t try to eat, didn’t even try to reach the grass by the shoulder. It hurt too much to bend his neck.

When the wildlife truck finally arrived, the vet walked around him once and just whispered, “Oh my God.”

The fur on his neck was worn down to almost bare skin. The tire had carved a deep groove into his flesh. You could see how long it had been there just from the way his body had grown around it.

The vet sedated him, and even sedated, the deer stayed on his feet, swaying gently as if he was too used to standing in pain to lie down. The vet tried to twist the tire. Nothing. It wouldn’t move at all.

He peeked inside and swore under his breath.

“Dirt,” he said. “Years of it. Pine needles, branches, mud, moss… it’s packed like concrete. He’s been dragging this thing for at least two years. Maybe more.”

Two years.

That means two summers of heat, two winters of snow, two mating seasons, two years of sleeping, running, existing with a 19-kilo weight cutting into his neck.

The vet called for the fire department. While we waited, we dug out as much of the packed dirt as we could with our hands. Chunks of hardened earth and moss fell to the asphalt like pieces of rock. The deer’s eyes were half-closed, but every now and then he’d flick an ear at my voice when I spoke to him. I kept one hand between his antlers, just resting there, like I was reminding him he wasn’t alone.

The fire truck arrived, red and loud in the quiet forest. They brought out hydraulic cutters — the kind they use to slice open crashed cars.

The first firefighter tried to bite into the smooth rubber, but the tool slipped. Too round, too slick. Then we showed him the gap where we’d scraped out the dirt. He set the blades there, braced himself, and squeezed.

There was this horrible metallic scream, then a sharp crack as the steel belt finally snapped.

Not enough. The tire still held.

He moved to the opposite side and did it again. Another scream, another crack. And then, finally, the rubber gave way and the tire split.

Two firefighters and the vet carefully opened the tire halves and slipped them off the deer’s neck. They didn’t toss them aside; they carried them like something sacred and dropped them to the road.

The sound when that tire hit the asphalt was… heavy. Final.

One firefighter tried to lift a half with one hand and had to use both. I suddenly remembered I had a fishing scale in my trunk. We hooked both halves onto it: 19 kilograms.

Nineteen kilos. Imagine wearing a bucket full of rocks around your neck. For two years. While trying to survive in the wild.

The vet cleaned the raw groove around the deer’s neck with antiseptic and put a thick layer of healing ointment on it. No fresh infection, just old, angry skin. Then he gave antibiotics and an antidote to wake him fully.

We all backed away a little.

The deer blinked slowly, like someone coming out of a deep sleep. Then, for the first time since I met him, he lowered his head without flinching and walked to a muddy puddle by the side of the road.

He drank. Long, deep, greedy gulps, like an animal that hadn’t had a proper drink in weeks.

Then he lifted his head, turned his neck left and right like he was testing this new freedom… and walked over to a road sign. He pressed his neck against the metal pole and scratched. Hard.

The vet laughed quietly. “First time in two years he can really scratch an itch.”

We all smiled like idiots watching a wild animal rub his neck on a pole.

Before he left, the deer turned back toward us. He didn’t bolt. He just stood there for a few seconds, looking at each of us in turn, breathing calmly, ears twitching. Then he snorted softly, turned, and walked into the trees with his head held high.

On the road behind him, the two halves of the tire lay like a dropped curse.

The vet said a careless human probably dumped that tire in the forest. A young deer got curious, slipped his head through it when his antlers were still small, and then grew trapped inside his own bad luck — and our trash.

Another few days, the vet told me, and his heart would probably have given out.

People say animals don’t understand us. But that deer ran onto the road instead of away from it. He chose people over the forest, over his instinct to hide.

Tell me… if that’s not a cry for help, what is? And if you were the one driving that morning, would you have stopped?