Deer

Oh my gosh. I am so NOT high-tech. I stuck the little "film thingy disk" in the little slot to download my deer pictures and got the pictures from when I redid the bedroom. What?!? Where are the deer pictures? I took a hundred of them! Oh. No. They can't be gone... They weren't. Thankfully. I had the wrong little "film thingy disk." I have my deer pictures. Phew! Not only am I so NOT high-tech, but I am so NOT a photographer, either. My Dad was a photographer and would have done the deer justice. Me? Nope. Thank goodness for digital cameras where all I have to do is point and shoot, though, because if I had to deal with lenses and speeds and little dials and meters, there would be NO pictures of anything - ever!

You can't imagine the hours of enjoyment I derived from sitting on my Mom's deck or in the screen-porch just watching the deer. It was so peaceful and tranquil and beautiful... Each and every morning and then again at dusk when they would come to feed on the corn that was put out for them. Well, it was mostly peaceful. Deer are not always the gentle animals they appear to be. The larger of the two females was quite mean, actually. If she was eating - no one else was going to eat from "her" pile - not the two adolescents - a male and a female - or the two fawns. The "Momma" deer clocked the young male one evening with one of the loudest "thunks" I've ever heard! You just know her thunking him on the noggin' made for one mean headache. The Babies - the fawns - got no favoritism by her, either; she'd knock them out of the way if she wanted their pile of corn. [There were - at a minimum five different piles of corn put down in a couple of locations - spread apart - so that others, besides the "Momma" could eat.] And, something I had never, ever heard before is the gutteral, nasal hissing sound deer make when they are not pleased with something - their surroundings, my being too close, or other deer coming to feed...

There were seven "regulars" to this deer menagerie. A family of five - the Momma, the two adolescents - a male and a female, and the two babies, the cute little fawns. It was absolutely amazing how much the fawns grew on a daily basis... And, then there were two males who would come, separately, one with antlers a good six or eight inches long - still covered with "fur," and one with smaller antlers - only a couple of inches - nubs... Occasionally there would be other stragglers that would wander through the woods and stop and munch the corn, but the seven - the family of five, and the two young bucks - were out there twice a day, like clockwork.

It distresses me to no end knowing that our feeding them was both good and bad. Good in that the deer weren't going to go hungry, and bad in that we were encouraging them to become freeloading, welfare recipients - turning them into liberals, no doubt... But worse, fattening them all for the upcoming deer hunting season! [I can't think about it. I know that the deer herds need to be thinned so that there is enough food in the wild to go around. Still, hunting just seems like such a cruel sport - and crueler in North Carolina where dogs are still allowed to run deer. At least make it a fair hunt! Having dogs do the work is NOT fair. And, once again, I am reminded of the scene from My Cousin Vinny, as Vinny is about to go hunting with the District Attorney [Trotter] - and Vinny says to Mona, "What about these pants I got on? You think they're okay?" To which Mona replies, "Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing along. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water - BAM. A fuckin' bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little pieces. Now I ask ya, would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?"]