I'll say more if things change.
Many hours later: Since I drove on the trip there, Mom drove home. I was talking about the psychic things, ghosts and whatnot, in the PsyCop novels. We were less than a mile from the house, along a wooded stretch, and Mom said in a tone of horror, "I see eyes." I looked, and indeed there were big glowing eyes three or four feet off the ground, right by the side of the road.
"See if it has friends," I said. I only saw the one pair of glowing eyes, though, and nothing else large in the bushes. As we went past at crawling speed, the eyes disappeared and I saw the silhouette of the deer as it moved in profile to us. It was a pretty big one. And that's why we take that road very slowly at night.