Fragments From Floyd

Monday a neighbor, a man I barely know, called on his day off and offered to help me with a farm chore that required the tractor I don't have. "Sure," I said, "if you're willing, now is a great time for me." The little blue Ford 3910 chugged down our gravel road a half hour later. His new very-used Rhino blade looked pitifully unequal to the task of gouging back the silt and rocks. Before last year's floods this was where my crossing over Nameless Creek into the meadow had been. It took two hours to create a new passage for my truck, scores and scores of trips back and forth miring up in the sandy loam, hanging on countless large water-worn rocks while climbing the grade away from the creek. As he pulled the tractor across the creek to start the job on the other side, something flushed from the waist-high bracken ferns. "I think I just jumped a little bobcat" he said, turning off the engine, standing up straddling the seat for a better view. "It might have settled down by that cherry tree". I went to give a look.

There at my feet, possibly not many feet from where it was born the night before, was the smallest newborn deer I've ever seen. It stood trembling, swaying on tall wobbly legs. I bent down for a better look, and off it ran, insomuch as it was able to run, into the high grass toward the creek. This meadow has been a "deer nursery" in years past. Buster, our late black lab, discovered quite a few over there. We mustn't let Tsuga come here, I thought. He's much more aggressive than Buster ever was. I'd hate to see him get a'holt of one of these critters.

Today he did--far down the valley. By the time we reached him, he was circling and nipping, the fawn was exhausted, confused, uncoordinated and defenseless. We pulled the dog all the way home by his collar. It will likely happen again.

The dispassionate, pragmatist Spockian side of my brain says "what better time to thin down the overpopulated herd of white-tailed pasture-rats than now, when a fella could go along with a club and bash'em like Harp seals." Yes, as a species deer have become a problem in Floyd County and the subject of contempt and disdain from gardeners of all stripes. But when you encounter them individually and as naïve, innocent newborns free of malice toward man, his yard or garden plantings or the fenders of his vehicles, it is unconscionable to think of doing anything but defending them against avoidable suffering.

But of course, a year from now, I may slam on the brakes to avoid this very deer who will be determined to throw himself into my truck windshield on a blind curve near the house and send my auto insurance rates up yet one more time.

And then, I'll rehearse again the ethical conundrum of protecting these tiny deer of early summer only to shoot, maim and kill the big ones a year later. Hmmm. There has to be a solution to unwanted births. And this opens up the whole new field of deer birth control. A day-after pill? Male voluntary sterilization? I won't even suggest those a-clinics for fear of agitating the pro-(wild)life crowd. Okay. Now I'm getting silly. I'll abort this foolery with a wise quote:

Thumper: He doesn't walk very good, does he?
Thumper's Mother: Thumper!
Thumper: Yes, mama?
Thumper's Mother: What did your father tell you?
Thumper: [clears throat] If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all.