This is a story of what can happen when you ask the birds to talk to the deer as well as how conversations in our minds can seem like they really occurred. It also has something to do with how you can take the girl out of Brooklyn and New Jersey, but you can’t easily take the Bambi fantasies of magical deer out of her so easily.
So on Monday morning, when a hunter Ken made arrangements showed up to set up a blind, all was not right in the disheveled kingdom of our home. Ken had talked about this extensively with Daniel, a friend of ours who’s an expert on the negative impact deer can have on plant life, and in his mind with me. Obviously, I was cordial and agreeable in his head. In real life, not so much. I was flipped out and angry, and untangling the mess entailed some sadness, confusion, chaos, a little crying, a little yelling, and a few “what the fucks.” But Ken assured me that the hunter would only come for one day, on Tuesday. He would only shoot one doe (this is doe hunting season) — no bucks, no fawns — and also, Ken had spoken to the birds about the situation and asked them to tell the does that if they weren’t down for this, they should lie low.
I had been speaking to the birds and the deer myself for years, often telling them (in my mind at least) that they were safe here, that this land was a sanctuary for them, that we would protect them, and hey, deer, if you need to eat some of the garden, so be it. Of course, it wasn’t just the garden: the deer had ripping out some of the oak trees Ken had been nurturing from acorns for years to bring back the oak-hickory roots of the woods. They had wreaked havoc on fruit trees in our yard too, and although Ken had taken pains to protect all these trees as best he could, it is true that the deer population is overly healthy here.
The hunter showed up very early Tuesday morning to sit up a tree behind a blind in cold and biting wind. After two hours, he had only seen five bucks, who leisurely wandered by on their way to shoot the breeze over coffee. He left for a while to warm up, planning to come up about 2:30 p.m. Right before he pulled in, I went outside and had a talk with the birds myself: “Please tell the does to get the hell out of here for a while and also that I love them.” The bad-ass chickadees and juncos stared at me briefly before going back to their sunflower seeds. The blue jays, crows, cardinals, and red-bellied woodpeckers skittered away, but I know they heard me. I went inside the house to work, hoping not to see Ken helping the hunter carry out a dead doe.
Turns out that this time the hunter only saw some fawns, laughing at the base of the tree where he waited, when really they should have been at school at the time. They hung out for a while, but amazingly enough — although there are ample does on this land — none opted to take one for the team.
Ken also sent me a passage from botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s superb book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, about “the honorable harvest.” I also believe in and support sustainable hunting and being mindful of the balance of a particular ecosystem as part and parcel of stewarding the land. At least in theory…..it turns out that I still have a Disney-storied deal with the deer, who have continually seem like embodiments of grace and blessings to me.
But for this year at least, no does were harmed in the making of this blog post.
P.S. Ken says to tell you that yesterday he saw three does hanging out by the driveway.
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