Fragments From Floyd

Towards dusk on this gray and increasingly dismal rainy day, Ann took the dog (on the leash) for a walk around the pasture. She let Tsuga loose when they crossed the creek, thinking he would make a bee-line for the house. Nope. He followed the scent, past the garden, then up the logging road where the trespassers had been walking when I first spotted them this morning. Had Tsuga not lead us to it, we would not have discovered it before the stench of dead flesh or the buzzards alerted us there was another dead deer on the steep hillside.

By the time Ann returned to the house with the very wet dog and this very uncheery news, it was almost dark. A hard rain was blowing sideways. And we had ourselves a dilemma.

What we could not do was leave the carcass to bloat and decompose a hundred yards from the house. What we could not do was dig a big enough hole to hide the corpse from scavengers--including Labrador retrievers. Also, I knew I could not hoist it into the truck for hauling off (where?) by myself. Now, my brother-in-law was around to help, but only this afternoon. He would be leaving for home early Thursday.

The deer was 30 feet up the very steep bank, frozen in death with its neck curved around one side of a pine, its large body on the other. I clambered up through the brambles, and was wet to the bone before I got to the beast. I did not relish the idea of dragging 120 pounds of dead weight down through the briar patch. Fortunately, rigor mortis worked to my advantage: flipped once, the gray, cold creature took a few more end-over-end spins down the hill, its rigid legs finally stopping its descent down the slope. Another nudge, and it slid the rest of the way down the squishy surface to the logging road. We drug it through the standing water along the grassy road where I'd backed the truck. My brother-in-law and I each took a front and back leg, and heave-hoed it onto the truck bed and slammed the tailgate shut.

Now what?

I can tell you I was not happy with what I did. But I still don't know what else I could have done.

With the windshield wipers going full tilt and the defrost attempting to blow away the fog that my exertion contributed to the humidity, in the last light of day, I drove up the narrow road into the mile of empty forest between our house and the next. I stopped mid-way, pulled the carcass off the tailgate and drug it a piece off the road. I left it there as a meal for the scavengers and the decomposers. But not for Tsuga.

What a mess. What an aggravation. What a dilemma. What a waste.