When I was a kid, you had to go “up north” to see a deer. Back then, spotting a deer, even for men with guns, was an iffy proposition. Today, they can leave their bottled deer urine home. Just drive recklessly through my neighborhood. Deer are everywhere, marauding house-to-house, indiscriminately stripping foliage and bark from anything standing. Then when the snow gets deep, and they get hungrier, they invade deeper into suburbia. Last winter, one was spotted at the Wendy’s drive-thru, ordering what was presumably a Caesar salad, because ordering a burger would have been semi-cannibalistic. The term “deer strike” used to refer to a collision with a car. Now it means they’ve become unionized.
Tonight I walk my dog Max, a long-haired German shepherd. Max is smart. She knows the words “walk,” “food,” “water,” and “squeaky toy.” She can spell, too. When my wife and I say we’re taking a “R-I-D-E in the C-A-R,” her ears perk up with anticipation. She understands the concepts of trust, love, and eating her own poop. But she does not understand the concept of “leash,” especially if she spots a deer.
We approach a doe gnawing the last remains of my neighbor’s already decimated arborvitae.
Max goes nuts, oblivious to the fact she’s restrained by the same six-foot leash as yesterday. She runs full speed at the deer, no more than thirty feet away. She nearly decapitates herself as the leash runs out of slack. Undeterred, she charges three more times, making that choking sound dogs make. The deer just stands there, bored.
“You want a piece of me?”
Finally, the deer swivels its head for one last glance, fluffs its tail, and disappears into the brush, achieving warp speed in 1.3 seconds. Max snorts and barks, twice, in a half-hearted attempt to tell the world what might have been…
if not for that damned leash.