Deer

There’s an old saying that people sometimes use that goes like this: “When God made ____, he must have been drinking.” Well, let me just say, that when God made deer, I don’t think he was just a little tipsy. I think he was completely wasted, passed out, and left his computer logged in and Satan got a hold of it and decided to really get God good this time. The result was a deer, and then for the grand finale, Satan created sexual reproduction and let the deer make more of themselves. Then he set God’s Facebook to “Interested in: men.” What a real jerk.

Figure your s*** out, God.

I used to like deer. In fact, I remember a camping trip I went on years ago where we had a deer in our campsite, and we all pet it because it wasn’t afraid of people. It was magical and naturey all that crap, but in retrospect, we should have punched it in the face. Mostly to give it a fear of humans, but also because it would have been delightful. For us, not the deer. I imagine the deer would have been like “Hey, woa, sup?” and acted all offended because the deer was probably a major douche.

Just a straight shot to the face.

Earlier this season, I was riding along with a co-worker when we came upon an injured deer lying on the side of the road, recently hit by a car. Usually getting run over by a car is enough to finish a deer, but this one was apparently the Dick Clark of deer and wasn’t dead quite yet. Dick Clark is dead now, I know that, but I think at the time of this incident, he wasn’t, so the joke was still topical. Anyway, so there was another person with the deer, a woman in tears due to the imminent death of this “poor” animal. She’d taken it upon herself to put it out of its misery by bashing it’s skull in with a rock, bless her soul. But, while this sounds effective, apparently it didn’t work quite right and the deer was, in fact, not dead yet. So my co-worker took it upon himself to finish the job. Usually this means getting the shotgun and shooting the deer in the head. However, this also involves paperwork. Paperwork that literally comprises of checking a box that says “dispatched wildlife” and signing your name. So, overwhelmed with the prospect of so much paperwork, he opted to instead slit its throat. It worked and turned out to be just as humane as a bullet, I’ll give him that, but I couldn’t help but find a little gallows humor in knowing that the deer was first hit by a car, beaten with a rock, then finished off with a nice throat slitting*. I almost felt bad for it, but not quite. Although, if there is a Hell, it’s coming back as that deer. Not that the deer didn’t maybe deserve what happened to it, but still.

Oh, did you, like, want me to get out of the road? Or how about I just freak out, do the exact opposite of logical, and let you run me over while my lifeless body destroys your car? Yeah? That OK? OK.

At this point you’re probably curious as to why I hate deer so much. It’s not that I hate each individual deer, it’s that I hate the idea of deer. Actually, no, that’s wrong. I hate each individual deer on its own unique merits. Let me explain.

Deer are really, really stupid. Like, woa. Back home, we don’t have so many deer that they line the roadway at night, waiting for a car to come by before they decide to cross. Out here, we do. While patrolling the roadway at night, I’ll routinely spot an evil, lurking deer head out my window, having passed it at 45mph without seeing it. This terrifies me beyond all reason, because I know and the deer knows full well that there was every possibility that the deer could make a crazed dash to intercept my vehicle at any time, killing us both. There is no predicting it. The deer can’t help it. He’s an effing deer. So, that's why it's so horrifying, just knowing what I and the deer both know what the deer is capable of. I imagine that as I pass by the deer without hitting it, he’s thinking “I’ll get you on the way back down the hill, you motherf***er,” and then spaces out for a few hours and ultimately gets eaten by a mountain lion or something.

EAT MORE! SO MUCH MORE!

I think that, when deer get together and talk about their day, it goes a lot like this:

“Hey, man.”

“Hey. What’d you do today?”

“Ate some grass. You?”

“Almost walked in front of this car.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. I think Phil died yesterday.”

“Yeah, man. He totally ran in front of a car.”

“Woa! Unreal! Well, anyway, I’ma go cross this busy highway at a dead sprint because I’m really f***ing stupid.”

“See ya, man.”

UGGHHH I HATE THEM. So much.

Not as much as I hate these little bastards, but close. SO close.

*Although my hatred for deer is vast, I was initially… disturbed that he’d  slit the deer’s throat instead of just shooting it. However, I was informed that the method used was the same method used to slaughter livestock, and one of the folks euthanizing the animal had worked on a farm that used this method. So, if this offends you, be offended at the farmers of the world, too, I guess. Or, maybe put that rage to something useful, like studying genetics and finding a way to make it so deer can no longer reproduce, thus turning the planet into a utopia.