I was wondering the other night what the dumbest animal is.

That thought came to mind as I was jamming on the brakes of our van, trying to avoid mowing down two deer. We were on Cascade Highway near Sublimity, Ore., and these two geniuses took up their station in the middle of the road and stood there.

I don’t know if they were waiting for Mr. Spock to beam them up, or if they thought our van was going to jump over them. Either way, they were not demonstrating, shall we say, much in the smarts department.

This is not my first experience with DDs, a.k.a. Dumb Deer. Some years ago, when I worked for the Stayton Mail, a woman called to inform me that a deer had been seen downtown.

It was a slow news week, but the sighting of a deer in Stayton didn’t even make my News-o-meter flicker.

Then she said that, while it was downtown, the deer had jumped through the plate-glass window of the old Plaza Restaurant, skidded across the floor, jumped up and ran outside again. In the process it whacked one of the patrons in the face, breaking his jaw.

Then it ran down Washington Street and into the Norpac plant before heading out of town.

All of which made my News-o-meter jump off the scale. I headed to the restaurant and talked to several witnesses, all of whom agreed that this may be the dumbest deer ever. Malicious, too.

I used to live in Minnesota, where deer were renown for their lack of intellectual capacity. Once I was talking to an insurance agent, who told me the weirdest claim he ever had gotten was from his daughter. She was driving her brand-new minivan and saw a deer in the road. She stopped the van to wait for it to get out of the way.

As she was stopped, the deer ran around to the side of the van, charged it and caused $2,000 in damage before running off.

Now that’s dumb.

Of course, there are plenty of dumb critters in the animal kingdom. Opossums should be included on any dumb-as-a-rock list. They just play possum whenever they’re threatened.

Our three cats, Spit, Buttercup and Eddy, should also be included in the Idiots Hall of Fame. If brains were dynamite, these cats couldn’t blow their noses. The only things they’re good for is eating and sleeping.

I take that back. The kids taught Eddy to do an impersonation of a bagpipe.

At any rate, we’re not talking smart here.

I used to think that cats were smarter than dogs, but we once had a dog, Toby, that could read my wife’s mind. No, he didn’t bite me whenever I forgot to wash the dishes.

Whenever, my wife took him for a walk, he would wait at the street corners until she looked both ways. She didn’t have to signal or say anything. He just knew when she decided it was safe to cross the street.

I’m not making this up. I’m pretty sure that dog was smarter than three out of our four kids.

And I’m not saying which kid passed the Toby Test.

Carl Sampson writes about rural life. In his day job, he’s the managing editor of the Capital Press.