My mind is a nomad. It wanders around unsupervised and bumps into all sorts of ideas and thoughts. One of these thoughts was along the line of Disney movies. Someone mentioned something about Bambi and my thoughts were off to the races.

Q: Why does everyone empathize with Bambi?
A: I’m not a cold hearted person but I just wonder about the exact emotional draw. Must be the orphaned child who watched his mother be brutally murdered. It worked for the show Dexter too.

Q: I get the sad story and baby creatures are really cute but has any movie had more of an effect on public opinion of deer?
A: No because one movie of an orphaned deer is enough. While the beginning is striking, the ending is somewhat like “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, just a collection of scenes made to wrap things up but ultimately disappointing. I think that Bambi getting his revenge would be more interesting.

Q: Do people understand that deer are actually jerks?
A: No and you should probably give some specific examples…..

Good idea. Here goes.

Deer Karma

First, I am not against deer hunting but it isn’t a sport for me. Anything where I have to get out of a warm bed in the winter at a time that I should be asleep, to go sit still in the cold, is not a sport for me. That takes care of duck hunting too.
As an outside observer it seems to me that deer hunting is a really frustrating sport. Think of all the money and time and effort to stalk something in the woods when that same something willingly jumps in front of cars to die. All. Day. Long.

Thousands of deer are involved in vehicle accidents across the US and sometimes they are just being jerks.

One morning in High School I see a friend and notice that he looks distressed. Naturally, I investigate.

“Hey man what’s up?”
“Eh. Damn deer.”
“Okay… Did a deer beat you up and take your lunch money?”
“Sort of.”

He starts to explain.
Earlier that morning he woke up to go hunting in a place he had been preparing for weeks. I assume he had selected a good location by scouting out paths and trails that deer had made in the woods near a farm. He drove to the farm in his father’s pickup truck.

While waiting in the cold dawn light, his patience looks to pay off. A large buck with a nice set of horns emerges from the brush. For whatever reason, the prize buck gets away. Maybe he heard a hunter, or the hunter shot and missed. Either way, the feeling of a missed opportunity weighs heavy on my friend’s mind as he trudges back to the truck and leaves in time to get ready for the school day.

As he pulls out onto the roadway and is just getting up to speed, he notices some movement in the edge of the woods.

The prize buck emerges from the woods and is in a full run for the roadway. The deer doesn’t make it to the road fast enough to end up in front of the vehicle but instead hits the side of the truck bed. The deer is running fast enough that it flips over into the back of the truck. My friend watches the action from the rearview mirror and it continues in slow motion. The deer scrambles around and jumps out the opposite side of the truck bed, scratching the sides with flailing hooves, and runs off into the forest. A few leaves float to the ground where the deer entered the woods, the only evident apart from the truck that a deer had been through recently.

The end result is a heavily damaged truck bed, sleep deprivation, and no deer to show for either.

Next Example
KARMA DEERED VEHICLE

Fast forward a few years and a big ugly buck is grazing lazily by the roadway. He is on an embankment about six feet in the air from the road level. It is nighttime and I see him and he sees my headlights. The constant white light hypnotizes the deer. I can only imagine that he slips into a semi-dream state where he experiences something like this:

Whooshing air! I am flying! There are two bright lights coming towards me. Oh thank heavens! It must be a pair of angels coming to rapture me to heaven. I knew if I grazed right and didn’t eat too many of the farmer’s beans that I would be good enough to get into deer heaven. Wait the lights are pulling away… Come back! I’m over here!

Panic at the disco. Saint peter is going to fly right past me. What can I do? I know. I’ll get in front of them and they will have to notice me and take me with them. That’s a great idea but I’ll have to jump.

I’ve watched the mesmerized look on the deer’s face for a good five seconds and as we approach I look to the back seat and check on Calamity Jane, Biscuit the Diaper Dog, and Supermom is in the front holding baby number two in her tummy. Such a beautiful family.

I turn my attention back to the road.

“OH SHIT.” That deer is going to jump. He is committing deer suicide and making me participate.

The jump couldn’t be timed any better. He lands directly in front of my car and squats almost to his knees from the force of his landing. As he stands, I swerve to the left to try and avoid him but it is too late. How did he grow such magnificent antlers. It looks like a chandelier at the Bass Pro shop.

Left shoulder – right fender. Head and antlers – center of hood, broken horns making a tinkling sound- all across the windshield, his body rolls up and off the right side of the car.

I drive a quarter mile just from shock and eventually pull over in a driveway to inspect the wife, kids, and lastly the car. Everybody seems okay and the car is drivable so we count our blessings. Then we realize that there is no way the deer survived. There is basically a deer face imprint in a steel hood and the horns shattered. The upside is that a clean hit to the head probably left some meat intact and I knew of a deer processor nearby. We decide to get the deer in the trunk and at least have something to show for the ordeal.

I turn the car around and drive back to the scene of the crime. Just as we stop, a black 90’s model Ford Taurus slowly drives past and I notice the truck is slightly ajar…with four deer legs sticking out of the back.

So I have a wrecked car and some thrifty redneck stole my road kill in about 4 and a half minutes. That is ballsy. What if it wasn’t dead and pulled a Tommy Boy halfway down the street? I can only hope. Deer stealing butt heads. Who sees a steaming pile of deer, twitching on the side of the road and thinks “Jackpot!”. Rednecks in West Tennessee that’s who.

So remember nothing good comes from run-ins with deer. They are jerks and the movie Bambi is a lie. Murder them with extreme prejudice. Even the cute speckledy ones. Especially them.

 

So if you teach your children that herbivores are just natures French Fries for all the carnivores of the world. This post is for you. Go thin the herd and protect our cars. You’re welcome.

At least in other countries the deer-like creatures are interesting.

Underdaddy to the rescue.