Bambi

On the windy-twisty road to Little One's rural school this morning, there was a deer in the road. It was lying on the asphalt, struggling to get up, panicked brown eyes begging me to not run it over. I wasn't sure how badly it was hurt, but it was clearly suffering. The adult voice in me told me that I should put it out of its suffering, and if I'd been a true country woman with a gun rack in the back of my rental car, I suppose I could have done just that, and bagged dinner in the process.

If this were home, there wouldn't be a deer in the road, because they've all been run out or run over long since. But if, for the sake of argument, there was one, I would call animal control, because it's dangerous to take care of these things yourself: wild animals, disease, you don't know where it's been, etc. We are a nation of people abdicating our authority to institutions. Not so the Irish.

I think the Irish would simply laugh at me, and tell me to call someone to put it out of its misery, cut it up and put it in the freeze, how often does dinner just land on your plate? They would not recoil in horror at the thought of dealing with a wild animal. Indeed one of our new neighbors, a self-proclaimed semi-retired Doctor (who seems to paint and walk his dog around the lake more than work), asked if we'd like to help him work his way through some venison he received last fall; the new season is upon us, and he needs to make room in the freeze. Yup, the butcher's window on Main Street (honestly, it's called that) has a new hand-painted poster that proclaims that they now have fresh venison.

When I drove back, after promising Little One that I would find out about Animal Control, the deer was gone. A friend reports that some folks who knew what to do had moved it to the side of the road. Whether it then left of its own accord, or became someone's supper, I have no way of knowing.