Deer

Yes, the deer surprised me.

Xena, Cecil and Nina, Chewie and Evi and I were just out enjoying the waning sunny afternoon while I was on break from work, wandering down the fence row, looking for "gold." I'm not sure which of us spooked the deer, which must have been bedded down in that copse of trees back in the field behind my house; suddenly she was just THERE, leaping up and away from us, moving so swiftly that she was almost out of range before I could even get the camera to my eye. It was only by the purest of luck that I managed to catch her in mid-leap.

I didn't get a great photo, but it sure was a great moment.

I am not a hunter, but I am not AGAINST hunting, and in fact recognize that it serves a real and valuable purpose: Deer herds multiply faster than one would imagine, and their ranks need to be thinned, plus the license fees hunters pay support conservation efforts--in fact may be the only financial support of conservation efforts, particularly in these lean days.
Still . . . How can you look at a deer flying across a golden field, and think, "Gee, I could nail that sumbitch!" How could you ever imagine that it would be more beautiful lying bloody and lifeless at your feet than flying freely across a mid-autumn bean field?

Yes, I'm a carnivore, I eat meat, and yes, I know that just a few short days or weeks ago, the steak on my plate was part of a steer happily grazing green grass in late summer sunshine (or more likely, crowded up to a trough in a feed lot). But I don't see that happy steer when I'm lifting the steak off the grill and cutting a small bite of it, "just to see if it's done." I am insulated by distance and time and geography, at least, from that steer, and so do not even associate the meat on my plate with the beautiful creature from which it came.

Then, there is the "familiarity breeds contempt" aspect, I suppose. Cattle are common, you see them everywhere (or, anyway, you did "back in the day" when I was a kid). Deer--again, when I was a kid--were much more rare, at least in the part of the country where I grew up. From the time we moved back to Missouri from Montana, when I was 8, until, well, I don't remember specifically, but it was much later, I recall seeing just ONE deer, a small doe that had somehow found her way to town, and, frightened and confused and hopelessly lost, happened to leap across a street in front of us one early morning when we were going into town for groceries or something. For us kids, or anyway for me, it was one of those magical moments that you dream about sometimes.

Now, nearly half a century later, a deer sighting is not so "special"--in fact, deer are probably more common than cattle around here. We see more deer than, say, quail, or even rabbits (which used to be common as houseflies).

Deer have become familiar.

So why, then, does the sight of one fleeing deer inspire wonder in me, rather than contempt?