Thursday, September 25, 2003
Deer Diary
It was the shank of the evening and we were full. I mean, really full. Whenever we eat at Andy and Heidi’s place, eating too richly, too many things and too much of them are the house rules. Good thing Andy’s my doctor or I wouldn’t trust him.
So supper was over and our eyes were slightly bulging from the mountains of food we’d eaten. Time for a nice post-prandial meander along the dark wooded streets twisting through the steep hillside where Andy and Heidi live up near Grizzly Peak. Grizzly Peak is an anacronistic misnomer - there are no more grizzlies around there. Lots of wildlife, but not carniverous bears. Mainly just coons, polecats, gophers, voles - and, of course, the deer. Andy calls them rats on stilts, but it’s fun to see wild deer - a fawn shyly nibbling from a rosebush or a doe demurely peeking from thick underbrush. Noble creatures.
Chaz and Lori and Kel and I ambled aimlessly along the narrow serpentine lanes, breathing clean ionized night air and peering out over the university and city and bay and other city and both bridges from on high. We chatted about work and life and love and generally silly stuff, as always. And then we held up, confronted by something I’d never before encountered - a tough deer.
This was more of a buck, I suppose. A big boy. Eight or ten point rack, and he was very close, looking straight at us, lowering his head a foot or two to stare us right in the eyes. He was in the front hedge of a house just down from Andy’s place, helping himself to some tasty shrubbery. His jaw worked the foliage slowly, deliberately, like a pitcher or a gunslinger with a chaw of cutleaf. His eyes were blacker by far than the starless night that surrounded us. Saliva dripped from his jaws in a foamy viscous cascade. Without taking his eyes off of us he pulled another mouthful of leaves from the lovingly and expensively tended bush, daring us to stop him.
We stood frozen for several minutes, wondering if it was safe to pass as he masticated his way through the neighbor’s garden. We wanted him to go away and leave us an open road. No dice, he communicated wordlessly, munching along almost belligerently in front of us. After several minutes of waiting, we figured that it would be safer for us to sneak by while he was still occupied with his meal, than when there was nothing else to distract him. One at a time we filed past, hugging the opposite curb, trying not to look at him or his crown of swords.
Okay, so it was a deer - ‘just a deer.’ And I have been given the “move on” by a rutting elk. But so what. We were drunk and he was huge; his head was a deadly weapon and we didn’t even have a cellphone. Maybe we could have taken him, if we’d had to. It wasn’t worth finding out. Once we got back to Andy’s place I had more wine, and possibly some bourbon. Calms the nerves, don’t you know.
