I have to thank the mechanical genius of Tired Iron Farm who put some sort of voodoo on that tractor last year, and Stabil, a gasoline additive that casts out evil spirits from the carburetor. The tractor was parked in my wonderful new garage this winter, safe from the evil vermin that love to eat wiring. O, happy day! O, happy day!
Whangdoodles Resolved
If you recall, I wrote in this very blog about whangdoodles possibly hanging around my barn. On my way to visit the horses in the dark, I heard a strange, organic noise that I was hoping came from my horses, even though I have never heard a horse make such a sound. Oh, but on this very bright and beautiful spring morn, that mystery has been solved! I stepped onto the back porch hoping to locate a very vocal song bird singing to his heart's content. When I moved closer to the screens, I heard that exact whangdoodle noise, but this time in the fine bright yellow light of day. The creature that produces that noise is none other than the white tailed deer. She leapt into the middle of Spiritcreek, and ran toward the east. I must have scared her by being on the porch this time of day. And I thought whangdoodles made that noise...
In my defense as a lifelong Kansan, deer had been effectively extirpated in Kansas by the time I was born. I had no early natural exposure to deer as a child. I did not learn deer lore from my family of rugged hunters and outdoorsmen because they were busy extirpating other species.
The first deer I saw in the wild was in Smith County, the summer of my eighth grade in school. A classmate asked me to meet him at dawn to walk out to the Old Lake, a little swamp about a mile east of town. In the quiet of a dew drenched summer dawn, we saw two deer that seemed as amazed to see us as we were to see them. It seemed magical to me at the time. Now, all these decades later, deer are still amazing me.
(Read first mention of whangdoodles here.)
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| You can discern the deer trail on the far bank. |
5 comments:
You poor, deprived person. As a public service and because I am your friend, I am personally going to ship you a whole ^%$#@ fleet of deer. No matter what it costs, and no matter how much it upsets the cursed people up the street who feed the buggers, the neighborhood bambis are going to Kansas. I bet there are no other mule deer there -- so hooray -- a new species to extirpate. Good word, Jackie. Watch for 'em.
Lest you think I do not love deer, may I say in my defense that I do love them. They are beautiful, graceful, magical. They just don't belong in a city, where they have nothing better to do than eat everyone's gardens. It's hard enough to grow things in this climate, without the addition of large, hoofed plant predators.
I say to the local deer: Fly Free, oh Bambis -- free to somewhere, anywhere else. I hear it's nice in Kansas.
I think you should put up a sign for the deer, advertising a free trip to Kansas. Here are the perks:
1 No natural predators of grown deer, except human beings.
2 Plenty of space to roam unfettered
3 Deer can and do routinely take revenge on human beings by throwing themselves into vehicles traveling at high rates of speed, causing untold costs and aggravation to humans
4 Deer populations outnumber human populations - they're getting the vote soon - and they'll do a far better job of electing reasonable politicians that the human beings
Oh, does that mean I can register them to vote? That might come in handy. I wonder if deer favor the Republican or the Democratic agenda? Maybe I will reconsider.
Hey... perhaps we've come up with a solution to these "generally wretched times": registering deer to vote. They could not do worse than the religious, extremely conservative Governor Brownback and legislature we have right now.
"The Koch brothers have been close political allies of Brownback's for nearly 20 years, and had the governor's approval to promote conservative challengers to Republican moderates already in office during the 2012 election cycle."
Need I say more????
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