The University Farm: Seasonal Charnel House

After parking, I watched two men get out of a truck and, while a third stayed behind the wheel, walk to the farm building's center back door, where they unlocked it and disappeared inside.

I minded my own business, wandered into the new hoophouse, ambled through, headed up the side of the larger hoophouse, then around it, all the time taking photos. 

When I noticed the dessicated butterflies, beetles, flies, bees stacked inside the interior folds of plastic, and, taken aback, thought of northern European still lifes of dead rabbits and birds and stacked fish on groaning boards, awaiting preparation and consumption, those reminders of fleeting time and death awaiting us all -- at that very moment, I heard a voice.

Looking to my right, I saw two of the men dragging a whitetail deer carcass (field-dressed and knife-slit-belly facing me) toward that very same door, swing it up the steps, go inside briefly, then come out, lock the door, and get in the truck. The third pocketed his smart phone, joined them, and they drove away.

Culling season in Sewanee, the season of darkness.

It's the little things

that save a day otherwise tainted by gray skies, a cat's problem ear and unplanned visit to the vet, ice pellets, a nagging headache.

Like five early daffodils, for example, blooming in woods where six deer nipped at other plants.

When the deer moved on, I moved out.

Now, the daffodils light my kitchen.

On My Return from the Library, This Happened

One the four does in my front yard greeted my deer statue.

(Or maybe she was just curious about the Christmas lights.)

Ghosts Who Slip Between the Light through Trees

My Autumn Leaves

by Bruce Weigl

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.

I watch the woods for deer who never come.   

I know the hes and shes in autumn

rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen   

apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work   

so I may let the crows in corn believe

it’s me their caws are meant to warn,

and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves

they know me too. They know the boy

who lives inside me still won’t go away.

The deer are ghosts who slip between the light   

through trees, so you may only hear the snap   

of branches in the thicket beyond hope.   

I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.

Long Shadows

I read for pleasure and for a living. A lot. Every day. Seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

Sometimes, I can't shake the words and the responses I have to them.

Today, I read a woman's discussion of ethics in which she stated two startling and, to me, contradictory facts of her morality: she is a Christian and she doesn't understand "animal ethics." When others present a point of view embracing ethical concern for animals, for example, she does not understand that view. She doesn't hold with that opinion, as it were.

And yet . . . if life is precious for one, I think, isn't it precious for all? Does she have pets? Does she care for them? What would she feel if she saw an animal suffering in her own yard? Would she do anything? Feel anything?

The small group of two adult and two young does that makes its winter home my yard has been here for several days now. What they find to eat is a mystery to me, but they pull up small somethings from the grass, and they nestle and sleep under old vines and against big stumps. Behind me, in the ravine on the college's land, bow hunters wait. I think the deer know this, as I do not see them head that way till dark. 

I do not wish the deer harm. They have needs just as I do for shelter, warmth, food, and even each other. I do not wish the hunters harm. Their work helps to reduce the large herd that threatens itself with population growth and that threatens the forest. I do not wish the forest harm. I do not wish the woman who doesn't believe in "animal ethics" harm.

But I do wonder if the harm caused by views like hers cast long shadows on all of us and not just me.

A Mother's Care

The small herd of eight deer slept most of the morning near my deck, camouflaged by old arbor vines. Around noon, they roused and grazed in my neighbor's and my yards.

It's hard to remember that these particular deer are two of many plaguing Sewanee and not the living embodiment of a mother's care. I see them and can't help thinking about my own family's mothers and mothering.

I admire such dedication and the source of the powerful instinct.

Winter Nap

If you look closely, you can count six deer from photo edge to photo edge.

The deer that visited my yard today, all six of them, chewed their cuds and rested and slept for almost three hours in the morning. One at each end of the group roused or the largest of them roused now and then and licked the smaller ones. These sentries looked and smelled in all directions for human predators. Using the large limb of a long-gone tree as a wind-break between my house and my neighbor's, they blended more perfectly than man-made camouflage with winter's decaying leaves. Only the occasional flash of a white tail and the upright stance of the adult doe checking on the younger ones gave them away. They provided silent company on the first sunny day in more than a week.

A sixth deer sleeps behind a tangle of vines beyond the right edge.

Parker, Where Are You?

Now that the forests are losing fresh foliage, the deer are bold, even to the point of living in my yard. Early Tuesday morning, I turned on my headlights and saw a buck lying in the grass with three does, standing by, eating the leftovers of my snowball bush.

Yesterday, this one stared at me through the rails of deck.
Tonight I saw my former student Parker, who, when he got home, went right back out to see if he could get a deer with his bow. When I first met him seven years ago, I didn't understand his fascination with hunting, but I encouraged him to write about his obsession anyway. Now, I wish I could invite him to come to my house and pick them off one by one.

It's a strange thing to have a love/hate relationship with an animal that is only doing what it must: survive. If I hadn't bought the plants they eat, I'm not sure I'd feel the hate because my admiration for their dignified silence far outweighs the cost of plants with which I try to rearrange nature.

May nature say deer and let me love their surprisingly large ears and deep eyes and velvety coats and capacity for standing and standing still and still.

The Return of the Bold Deer

Just as has been true of ants, I have learned that movies also mislead us about deer. As a child, I cried and cried during Bambi. Once, I longed for a dotted fawn when I read Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's lovely The Yearling.

Now that I have lived with deer every day since December 2002 (I once counted 13 of them one Sunday in my front yard) and now that I personally know two people who have suffered from Lyme disease (happily not here from our deer) and now that I have spent more than $200 on plants that have summarily been eaten to the ground, I think of them as pests, not as pets or cute Disneyesque figures. I have also learned that chuffing loudly at them while simultaneously stomping my feet on hard ground will make them turn and run. The problem is that they come in droves anyway -- at night, in early morning, during the day -- and munch away and munch away and munch away. Ach du lieber!

Today's visitor to the edge of my yard tried to stare me down. I won.

(By the way, the Terro terrorized the ants. They have now disappeared!)

Basil

I had two pleasant surprises today, both involving Trink, who had a stroke almost two weeks ago.

First, Boo called to tell me about her visit with Trink yesterday in Nashville. Although she is paralyzed on the left side and must be reminded to swallow, Trink is "there": she has her sense of humor and quick mind. Her daughter has suggested that visits be limited for now, so I am delaying seeing her.

Second, Trink's daughter Gabrielle spoke with me early this afternoon and suggested that I walk through the house once a week to make sure nothing is broken or otherwise amiss. When I went over, she also gave me these pots of basil. Yum.Now I must figure out where to put them. After some research about deer and basil on the Internet, I have discovered this: some claim deer eat it and some claim they don't. I think I'll pot some on the deck and plant some in the front garden which, because of the mint, the deer have left alone -- for now. We shall see.

The Deer on My Porch

I do not mind the presence of one deer: the one on my porch, made of cast concrete, painted, and left to weather in a garden art yard of a store on the outskirts of Scottsboro. Earlier this summer, I drove to Birmingham to celebrate Virginia's third birthday. Because I had no agenda, I took one of the long ways, turning after Stevenson onto 72 to the town where the nine famous black boys were falsely accused and tried and where today the unclaimed baggage store garners national attention. For me, Scottsboro has become a shopping mecca for concrete birds and gnomes and rabbits. When I saw a shoulder-high buck and his doe off the highway as I sped by, I took the first left, completed a U-eee, and drove straight back. Now when the deer nightly raid my garden for tasty morsels, another deer, a silent one without appetite, stares back. He is my welcome mat, and he always makes me smile.