Tuesday, November 21, 2006

 

LET'S WIPE OUT BAMBI!


As everyone on the planet knows, deer season is here.
As everyone on the planet is also aware, this is the season of the rut, which is a tender term for "courting season for deer."
It’s no accident that hunting season is scheduled each autumn during the rut. That’s because deer go bonkers. They lose all natural caution and common sense. They charge into places they don’t belong and run amok, throwing discretion to the wind. (Which reminds me of my weird brother Tosh in his younger years.)
These days, there are way too many deer. Not long ago, the Virginia Game Department estimated that there are a million deer in Virginia alone.
Bull! There are half that many in my back yard every night, dropping mounds of little round pellets and eating the day lilies.
Deer were so scarce in Scott County when I was a boy that a single sighting swept through the Yuma community like wildfire. People talked about it for days.
Today deer are so numerous that they appear to be hooved rats, plus they continue to multiply like the dancing brooms Mickey Mouse conjured up in "Fantasia."
I confess that I have spent most of a dissolute life preaching conservation. Bring back the little beauties, I wrote. Obey all conservation laws and don’t kill more than your share.
At the risk of repeating myself: Bull!
After last week, you can wipe them down to Harry Truman-era level, and you won’t get a peep of protest out of me.
That’s because a huge buck jumped off a bank on Rock Springs Road in Kingsport a few days ago and demolished the grill, hood, right front fender and windshield of what, until then, had been a reasonably attractive little Ford Ranger truck.
My wife Brenda was driving, but it could have been anyone. Here was an 8-point buck with swollen neck and lust in his eye, rampaging after a pretty doe. His purpose was to ensure that there’d be even more little deer next year.
The size of the obstacle didn’t matter. The crazy buck would just as soon have tackled a Sherman tank in his agitated condition (which only extends the comparison between a buck in heat and my brother Tosh).
Put my truck in the shop for almost two weeks and cost me nearly $1,800. Scared my wife and step-daughter to death. My wife was so shook up she couldn’t make biscuits and gravy for three days.
So I am quite angry at deer for the moment.
Actually, I’ve been lucky until now. I’ve swerved lots of times to miss deer, and I once had to stop dead on I-81 outside Roanoke to let a coyote cross the highway. But that’s another story.
When I used to live in the Shenandoah Valley, I had to drive to Richmond once a week. Crossing Afton Mountain on I-64 and proceeding into the flatlands between Charlottesville and Richmond, I’ve counted as many as a dozen mangled deer carcasses on any fall morning.
Come through a few days later and there’d be a dozen more. I used to wonder what damage they’d done to a Mack truck or a new Lexus at 70 mph. Now I’ve got a good idea, and my wife was only doing 35.
So I encourage you, noble Nimrod, to take all the deer the law will allow this hunting season. There are more than enough to go around. In fact, they’re a menace. A pox on ‘em.
In fact, I’ll borrow a line from Joseph Conrad in "Heart of Darkness." (It’s the same line used by Dr. Hunter Thompson after the Hell’s Angels had stomped him until they got tired and left him for dead.)
The line written by Conrad and croaked by Thompson was:
"Exterminate all the brutes!"
Everybody say amen.
END









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