Damn deer.
I don’t like them, but I have never killed one. Well, not on purpose anyway. There was that time when a buck was running alongside the driver’s door of my father’s Olds 98 Diesel while I was driving the backroads of Palo Alto County. This teenager was motoring about 25 mph on a winding road, and I could have reached out the window and pet it. Instead, I slowed down, and that deer darted in front of Dad’s car. Thump…Thump. I ran over it with the front and back tires. Then I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that deer stand up, shake it off, and run into the woods. Amazing.
Not too many years later, I had a deer in my college dorm room — or at least part of one. My roommate was an avid hunter, and he asked me to come out to his car one night. He popped open the trunk and showed me a deer carcass, still fresh from the harvest. He had the meat processed and the head mounted, hanging it with great pride in our dorm room. As such, he wasn’t happy when my friends would put cowboy hats on its head and cigarettes in its mouth. I found the deer head kind of creepy, but I played along.
Many years later, while managing a newspaper in Nebraska, a deer made its way into our Main Street office, pushing open the glass door with its antlers. Once inside, it became a bucking bronco, taking out everything in its path, leaving blood splattered on the punctured walls. A quick-thinking reporter opened the back door and led it out by hand.
I will let you in on my bias. I still don’t like deer. They infiltrate our neighborhood, eating anything within reach, including the Christmas lights I so carefully hang in the bushes each year. They also like to do their business in my backyard, and my dog has a strange fascination with rolling in it. Disgusting. I could do without deer.
And then I met Violet, a beautiful doe that nestled in our backyard with her fawn each evening. She would mother this young deer, protecting her from the big dogs down the street and the big people everywhere. But she couldn’t protect her from big cars. When a young driver swerved to miss Violet last week, he came in direct contact with her offspring. Thump…Thump. But this little deer didn’t shake it off.
Meanwhile, Violet (the young neighbor girls named her) still makes her way to our backyard each evening, and each morning, and each afternoon. Confused. Searching. It’s truly sad. Those deer I learned to hate don’t seem so awful now, at least not this one.
If there is any good in this story, it is that my dog senses something and doesn’t even bark at her now. And if there is any humor in this story, it is that he still rolls in her poop.
Damn deer.
Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com | 
