Dear Blog Reader:
I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am at the end
of a very intense and eventful week. I officially started the wood cutting
season Friday. I am three weeks late. However, with taking a day off, and
piecing together a three day weekend next week as my employer sees fit to
celebrate the capital of Ohio on October 8, (look it up) I hope to get two
loads a weekend and get myself back on schedule. I know that it seems incongruous worried about
wood cutting on beautiful 70 degree late September days, but I need twelve
loads of wood before the snow flies or next January and February will be tense
as I wait for a winter thaw to sneak out and get some wood to tide me over
before the next big blizzard.
I do not use the verb "sneak" lightly. Everyone knows that the
assassin deer become even more terrible and fearsome during the winter months. In
order to be successful, I would have to sneak out to the woods, cut down trees
using very loud and not very sneaky chainsaws, split the wood and get back to
the safety of the house all before I was discovered by those crafty and cranky
deer. They're cold for goodness sakes. They are jealous of our building skills
and secretly hate our long winter naps in our warm quilt covered beds with our
non-ice covered indoor plumbing. I imagine that is what they hate most. There
is nothing worse than urinating on frozen ground and having said urine splash
up on your tiny cloven hooves; nothing worse except not being able to wash the
urine from your little cloven hooves because the stream is frozen over.
It has been an eventful week on the assassin deer front, as
you can guess since the first two paragraphs have been dominated by their sad
lots in life. On Monday evening, I was ambushed by two assassins. It had been
rainy. The clouds were blocking what little light we receive during the dusk
moments of late September. I was on the last leg of my evening ride. As I came
upon the elementary school, I heard a series of crashes coming from the corn
field on my left. I turned my head quickly left and saw two assassin deer 20
feet away emerging from the cornfield with menace in their eyes. I did not
hesitate and swerved my bike towards them and started up a banshee type yell.
The yell and the newly purchased helmet light, which is very bright, startled
them just enough that their courage waivered. They turned their white little
tails and like the French ran away. I chased them 50 yards down the side of the
field
With their flight, I was fortunate, because last weekend the
assassin deer struck with deadly efficiency. In an article tucked in the middle
of the state section in the Indianapolis Star were a few paragraphs that
reported an ATV enthusiast was killed in an ATV accident near Peru , Indiana
Sure you can pop a wheelie and have the vehicle come over
and pin you to the ground; a horizontal surface. Sure, you can ride on too
steep a grade and have the ATV tip left or right trapping the rider on the
ground. Once again, that is a horizontal surface. This man was trapped between
this ATV and a vertical tree. I find it incongruous that he stood against the
tree, held on to the throttle, put the vehicle in gear, let out on the clutch
and had enough speed to pin and subsequently kill himself against a tree.
Depending on his girth and arm length the distance traveled may well have been
less than 4 inches. Let’s be generous and say that he was fit and had
grotesquely long arms, the machine may have traveled 10 inches. How many ATVs
can go from zero to twenty in 10 inches? Zero, I tell you.
No the authorities think that we can’t read between the
lines. They think that we live in the world of make believe where the rules of
physics don’t apply. Well, I for one live in the real world. There are other
forces at work here. I think that the byline provides the most important clue
of all – Peru Peru , Indiana
Look Timmy, I wonder what that trained deer is thinking. I’ll
tell you what he is thinking mom. He is thinking if I only had opposable cloven
feet I could drive an ATV through the woods and pin unsuspecting humans to
vertical surfaces. Then one day one of the smarter ones after walking through a
clay pit noticed that the clay sticking to its dewclaw adhering tightly enough
that with the proper manipulation and practice it could be used to operate the
throttle on an ATV with an automatic transmission. Sure, it would not be able
to assassinate a real man; a man that had an ATV with a manual transmission and
a clutch. But a sissy, automatic transmission, ATV driving, man would work, and
you had to start some where.
But the deer knew nothing but frustration. It had perfected
it’s dewclaw mud packing extensions to a science, but it could not be
manipulated with the dexterity needed for its awful purposes. It lacked the
range of motion and fine motor skills need for its nefarious plot. Then one day
as with most evolutionary jumps, outside forces came together to let the
assassin deer move beyond antler goring and bicycle ambushes. One day, little
Timmy grew up and had his thinking contaminated by Disney. Watching Bambi
during his formative years, he was heart broken when Bambi cried over her
fallen mother at the hands of the murderous hunter. This injustice must be
rectified, Timmy thought.
So Timmy became an animal orthopedic surgeon. He practiced
his craft, setting dog and cat legs. Always paying special attention to those
cases that involved the lower legs of the cloven foot animals. He would do
pro-bono work on goats, sheep, and cows, always perfecting his craft, studying
how to give Bambi the tools needed for revenge.
Well, I hope that you are happy Timmy. Your dreams and
Bambi’s dreams for murderous terror in the wood have been realized.
So those of you who spent one or two evenings this weekend
around a fire enjoying the spectacular Harvest Moon, remember that those
campfires were being watched, and in 28 days something else will enjoy the
Hunter’s Moon.
Take care,
Roger
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