The closest emotion I have to hatred - I mean the blanket hatred that underlies blind racism - is directed at deer. I really hate them. I'm a gardener, on a mountain, in a wooded area. My garden is a test kitchen for deer. I can name six plants that the deer don't touch: Peony, Daffodil, Barberry, Mint (family), Autumn Clematis, Myrtle. Everything else gets nibbled, often destroyed. In ten years of gardening on the mountain, I have been made a fool of, I've been robbed, I've been victimized. I don't appreciate the beauty of a caramel-colored doe, or a mightily racked stag, peering over a bush, softly masticating tender greens, its gentle eyes staring. I throw rocks at them. And they are slow to yield. I shout and hiss, and they leap away, only to return in dark of night.
On a recent morning, I was enjoying the view of our backyard, from inside, when I caught the telltale movement of a deer's head bobbing behind a lilac bush - only one garden predator attacks at that height. As I lunged for the door handle, poised to hiss her away, I noticed a tiny movement on the ground. It was a newborn fawn, about the size of a cat. Its freckled fur looked like it had just been towel-dried, unkempt and spiky, not quite wet. The tiny faun bobbled to its feet, barely able to stand. I stood in rapt amazement, quiet except for my abrupt release of the door handle, which made enough noise to alert both the mama doe and my spastic deer-hating dog to the circumstances.
My 40-pound, brindle coated cattledog/mutt Pumpkin made her best attempt to get out: picture Gene Kelly in Singin in the Rain, running up the wall and flipping back to feet-on-floor. We call it the alley-oop. At a target peak of 5 feet off the ground, the force behind the move is indeed threatening. The mama doe hesitated, then took several slow leaps out of sight. Her tiny baby wobbled, then hopped. Hardly managing to balance on all fours, it made enough little hops to finally disappear behind the brush, while poor Pumpkin hyperventilated beside me, denied the kill once again.
I knew it was fawn season. Reports were rampant of fawn sightings on our road. Oh my God! They're so cute! They're so bee-uuu-tiful! And they will grow up to be garden-killers, if the coyotes don't get to them first. I knew that damn doe and her damn baby would be back. Hungry. But I enjoyed sharing my fawn story with friends who know how much I hate deer. The irony wasn't lost. I thought, "This is my punishment for saying such terrible things about deer all the time. This is the universe telling me to give it up already. This is Nature beating me. And I thought we were friends."
Yesterday my family had what we call Pajama Day. It was a lazy Sunday, and the girls and husband and I hung around the house all day. Of course, by about 4pm we're all really sick of each other, and my husband is taking secret cigarette breaks in the driveway. We call that Calling His Grandmother, although the girls know he doesn't have a living grandmother. During one of such breaks, I peek at him through the kitchen window and he covertly gestures for me to come outside. I'm thinking maybe he's craving a little alone time with me - even just a couple of minutes. So I tiptoe out, and then see by the look on his face that he's about to tell me something unpleasant - maybe awful. Then our dog Pumpkin runs by. She's supposed to be in her pen, a.k.a. The Corral, whose 7-foot walls can't contain her when she really wants out. She's not allowed to be running by. Husband rolls his eyes, then tells me: Pumpkin has killed the baby deer. It's in the driveway.
I look past him, and there it is. Bambi. Tiny and flat, lying on her side, with a big bloody wound across her middle.
As a Mother, I am heartbroken. As a Gardener, I am vindicated. As a Hater, I am only mildly conflicted.
We forbid the children to go outside, and of course they have to have an explanation. So we tell them the truth, explaining that Pumpkin was acting on her natural instincts, just as she had done before, with the birds, the groundhogs, and the neighbor's cat. They want to see the corpse, but we deny them. Husband puts his manly pick-up truck to good use, and hauls the little carcass away.
Today I am still glad that there is one less deer on this mountain. I'm sorry for that mama doe, but I don't like her or her kind.
Do I sound like a racist? I think I do.
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