With news flying at me last week like black flies in a sticky Maine bog, I never got to a subject I wanted to discuss but figured I’d get to it this week. So, here it is: the subject of deer jumping to their deaths one by one off highway overpasses in deadly chain reactions. Who would have ever guessed that the little tidbit I put in this space a few weeks ago, just a simple tease to smoke out information that was for some reason impossible to pry from the authorities, would grow such sturdy legs? I can’t say I’m disappointed.

Anyway, soon after that quick mention of possibly two deer catapulting to their death off the Route 2 overpass spanning Interstate 91 in north Greenfield around daybreak June 17, I received an email from an old friend and UMass professor who preferred to remain anonymous. A PioneerValleytransplant from westernMaryland, where many family members remain, the man recalled “nearly 10 bucks leaping to their deaths near Flintstone, Md., on Interstate 68 one summer evening several years ago.” He had unsuccessfully Googled the story before sending me a link to theCumberlandTimes-News and suggesting I call there. Someone would remember the incident that had received extensive press coverage. Well, I followed the link, found the name of Managing Editor Jan Alderton, gave him a jingle and spoke to him at his midmorning desk. Although he couldn’t remember the incident, he knew just the man who would, veteran Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers, and patched a call through to his extension. Sawyers picked up on the second ring and instantly remembered the carnage, which wasn’t recent. He guessed it occurred 10 or more years ago and, he thought, involved six bucks in velvet jumping one by one to their deaths, leaving a messy scene on the pavement below.

“Do a YouTube search on ‘deer jumping off bridges’,” Sawyers suggested. “I don’t think there’s anything on that particular incident but such deer events are not unusual. I remember someone sending me a YouTube link years ago.”

I took his advice and, sure enough, many videos, some with sinister laughter in the background as deer leap bridge railings to their death. Myself, I can handle such visuals and accept them as tragic reality, but I can’t say I find any humor in watching animals take death leaps.

Back to my original UMass professor source, he grew up on a dairy farm and surmised deer were predisposed to a follow-the-leader mentality common among hoofed farm animals. “I guess most people were astonished that those deer would follow one after another over the railing but I suspect it may be similar to other hoofed-animal behavior,” he wrote. “For instance, cow behavior. The old farm boy in us told us to identify the lead cow, get her to go somewhere and the rest of the herd would follow. This is the ‘lead-cow concept’ that leads a herd in a specific direction, and in this case, a lead deer leading the rest (on a fatal, panicked decision). Pretty amazing but it happens.”

Yes indeed. And apparently it happened right here inGreenfield, although the state police weren’t about to confirm it or provide further details to the scribes who tried to follow up on the initial June 17 police report. I’d love to know why. Sounds more like a power trip than anything else.

I blame secretive presidential candidate Willard “Mitt” Romney, who is now under fire for withholding income-tax returns from his days at Bain Capital. As governor, Romney instituted silence fromBayStateemployees by forbidding any press interaction without prior approval from a third-party screening agency. Now, even the most benign news must pass through these channels, stifling investigative journalism by tipping off the targets of probes and eliminating surprise bombshells. Such potentially damaging stories are these days softened by government spokespeople who flood the press with damage-control releases before the story “gets away from them.” In the old days, the harmful story broke, then the damage-control tried to play catch-up. There’s less and less of that these days, thus old news and declining readership. It’s a death knell for newspapers that wait for press releases, the same ones sent elsewhere the same day and “broken” by local television and radio stations before hitting the street in print.