The Buck Stops Here

Oh deer ...

The first time I came across a deer on my ride to work, I was all atwitter about the encounter, thinking “gosh, I must be the only person, like, EVAH, to see a deer on my way to work!” After a couple of more sightings, my amazement shifted toward amusement (while still maintaining my appreciation for the environment in which I am fortunate enough to live, as evidenced, on those occasions, by utterances such as “whoa. That’s pretty fucking cool. I am fortunate to live in an environment such as this.”

But now I see them for what they really are: giant annoying squirrels. Rodent ruminants, if you will. They’re starting to get a bit sassy, too … why, just last week, I was cruising along the path early in the morning, marveling at the dense fog which had blanketed the landscape, and which reminded me of the movie An American Werewolf In London (keep to the roads … stay off the Moors …), which further led me to imagine how delicious a tasty pint down at The Slaughtered Lamb would be (they aren’t open at 6:30 am, but my tastebuds wear no watches) … when I was snapped back to reality as I came around a corner and nearly broadsided a doe. “D’oh!” I muttered.

She stood there and looked at me for a few seconds, from about 5 feet away, then slowly walked toward the grass and started nomming away. I rode past about another 15 feet, turned around, and saw that there were five of them having breakfast together in a little group. They didn’t seem all that interested in me, except for the one with the horn thingies (the boy deer, I’m pretty sure), so I took my backpack off and got my cellular phone out, as it’s equipped with a camera as well, thinking I’d snap a few photos.

A couple of minutes had gone by at that point, and the boy deer kept staring at me, which started to creep me out a little bit (what if he was a were-deer? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROAD?). Finally, I put my phone away and got my backpack on, and was getting ready to continue down the path, when he lifts up his front leg, puts his hoof up to his face, then points it at me. That threw me a little, and I wasn’t sure what it meant, until I realized that he was doing that eye-finger-point thingy that’s supposed to be some kind of intimidating gesture. (Even though deer have cloven hooves, he wasn’t really spreading them apart like you see in the movies, so I was a little slow on recognizing the threat.)

Having just gotten home from The Fireside Tavern four hours earlier, I was feeling a bit bold and feisty, so I sez to him, I sez “You wanna piece of me, Vinnie?” That was intended as short for “venison,” which I thought quite clever for that time of the day – I’m not sure if he caught it or not, and in truth, it mattered not, because my next remark, which suggested that Bambi’s mom died in a fire because she was a whore, as is prescribed in Leviticus, seemed to push all of the buttons he had to push.

Luckily, I was able to clip in to the pedals without falling over several times, as I normally do, and I only felt his hooves scrape my back once. I do feel bad about having escalated a situation in which we both should have been able to peacefully coexist. Not too bad, though … I mean, they’re merely oversized squirrels, right? I just hope his buddy Moose doesn’t show up anytime soon.