Sunset wasn’t far away and I was sitting on the sofa last night when outside in the yard, my eye caught some movement.
I immediately saw it was a fawn and grabbed my camera, raced downstairs and trying desperately not to spook anyone, I managed to get several shots of her. And her brother! Yes, there were two of them.
Nearby and keeping a watchful eye on the proceeding was Mom.
She was the same young deer who visited a short few weeks ago and this time she came back with her babies.
I know her to be Mrs Brisbey’s daughter, Teresa. And two or three years ago, her mom did the exact same. She came by herself first and then when she decided that my yard presented no danger, she brought back Teresa as a young fawn.
And here we are now, with the life cycle repeating itself. I love it.
I hope you enjoy some the images that I have put at the end of the blog. I absolutely love deer!
Ninety nine times out of a hundred, I am embarrassed about the state of my yard. Neighbors around me have perfectly groomed yards and lawn. Mine is over-grown wilderness, lawn-less and I must in that sense be the butt of neighborhood jokes.
But the benefit of keeping my property in this manner is the amount of wildlife that frequents the place. Raccoons and Possums live here of course, as do snakes and squirrels, and occasionally I get the deer, armadillos, and every type of bird and butterfly/moth you could imagine.
I talk to them all, which I am sure is one of the signs of senility but I don’t care. In my mind it is all about making sure everyone feels welcome and unthreatened.
I put food out for everyone on a daily basis, but the one creature I have stopped feeding is the deer.
It is the reason for this, that generated the thought for this morning’s blog.
You see, when Mrs Brisby started coming here, I checked online as to what kind of foods deer liked and immediately went to a feed store and got deer corn and I put it in a couple of places in the yard. And sure enough, Mrs Brisby would keep coming back and eating it.
It was fabulous seeing so much of her and I was able to stand within ten feet of her and talk to her while she was eating.
It was only when I went looking for the second bag and I went to Walmart and found it there … in the hunting section!
Yes, it is used to attract deer by hunters who want the deer to get closer and become distracted.
That moment is when I realized I was grooming Mrs Brisby to trust man. And unfortunately almost all men who spread corn for deer, do it with the intention of killing them.
I felt so upset and resolved never to do that again.
I can’t, for the life of me, imagine the mindset of anyone who could look down the barrel at a little creature like this and feel justified in pulling the trigger.
Do you know how dysfunctional a mind has to be to normalize such behavior? There isn’t a hunter I know who doesn’t talk about how they are only doing this because they don’t want the deer to die from overpopulation. Or how they always eat the meat. That kind of shit.
That they allow themselves to justify murder of any creature is a clear indication of a defective mind. And for all you little girls who have daddies that go out hunting on weekend, understand that he is out there murdering Bambi. Tell him to cop the fuck on.
Wouldn’t it be cool if large Grizzlies came up with fake creatures that lured the hunters and distracted them, so that they could kill them? I mean, they would definitely eat the meat and heaven knows humans need to be population controlled.
There is no excuse to murder any creature. Even creatures that don’t look appealing to us, should be allowed to live their lives without fear of being destroyed by us. But if we are out there murdering gorgeous creatures like deer, what chance does the rest of the animal kingdom have?
Nothing is safe from humans. We have proved that again and again, hunting or fishing in such numbers, or destroying and consuming environments to where they go extinct.
Fuck, we even kill ourselves. We train little Johnny on how to use an assault rifle and then just because Mommy didn’t tell him what a wonderful kid he was that day, he takes the gun and murders a bunch of other kids at school.
Humans are by and large defective creatures. The very intelligence that enabled us to move to the top of the food chain and colonize the planet, is the mechanism by which we destroy everything.
It allows us to rationalize willful environmental damage, murder and consumption of an insane amount of living creatures, enslavement and abuse of our fellow man, and in fact, anything else deranged we wish to explain away.
People have an innate ability to rationalize the irrational.
When you add that to a self-serving ego that empowers this feeling of supremacy, it becomes a recipe for disaster.
Bambi was one of my most favorite Disney movies of all times and as a child I adored it. It was only in later years that I stopped being able to take joy from it when several lines from the dialog hit home to where they made my heart hurt.
“Come on out, Bambi. Come on. It’s safe now. We don’t have to hide any longer. – What happened, Mother? Why did we all run? - Man was in the forest.”
And then later in the movie when the giant stag appears in the snow storm to tell Bambi that ” Your mother can’t be with you anymore. “
Wouldn’t hurt so much if I wasn’t a man.
… just a thought!
