Ever since we built our house in the woods, we’ve had a momma deer living on our property. And every fall a handsome young buck has visited her.
Now, those deer are not exactly an unmixed blessing in our lives. We haven’t been able to put in a vegetable garden because they come right up to the house and eat everything in sight, including the leaves off the grape growing next to the front door.
Back in the first year we lived here the deer hadn’t discovered us yet, so we put in a garden. But then the buck did discover us, and that freak not only ate the tops off all my huge, healthy tomato plants, when I netted them so he couldn’t eat them he walked on them instead.
One day that fall I looked out the front door, and there he was standing right smack dab in the middle of the path through my garden.
I threw open the door and ran at him shrieking in fury, “Get out of my garden! Get out! Get out!”
He stared at me for a moment, with his huge chest, black eyes, and extraordinary rack of antlers.
He lowered his head a bit.
Then, when I was about fifteen feet from him he turned and cantered slowly in to the woods, pausing once to look back as though he simply couldn’t believe his eyes.
I stood in the middle of my garden path panting in rage, staring him down. Later, when I told our logger about this, he said, “You know it’s rutting season. They get pretty feisty. I don’t think I’d run straight at any more bucks if I were you.”
So I didn’t (but I was still furious when the bear came through later and tore down our new fence and in the morning the deer had eaten all the leaves off my strawberry plants).
Then last Sunday morning my husband and I were sitting in our rocking chairs by the living room french doors, and he said suddenly, “Look.”
And out of the tall grass beyond the new deer fence came hopping a tiny, graceful, carefree little figure with spots all over it.
My husband got his camera and said, “There’ll be another,” and sure enough, about a minute later here came the other half of the matching pair, bouncing through the tall grass as though on springs. Bounce! Straight in the air. Boing!
And in that moment I saw myself perfectly clearly as the protagonist of my own story:
1. I need my beloved vegetable garden, upon which I lavish such intense work and care.
2. And I also need to be enchanted. . .by my nemesis.
What a great story! With a perfect conclusion 🙂
What a marvelous tale! Even though they can be quite destructive to property, woodland creatures are such fascinating little things. I don’t live in the woods, but my neighborhood is covered with brown bunnies. On any given evening, my husband and I will spot anywhere from two to five of them!
I hope you’re having a great morning!
~L.M.
Thanks, LM! I had a very peaceful week mucking about in the garden and working on The Art & Craft of Prose. I read James Joyce, Faulkner, Ian Fleming, Dorothy Parker, a 1936 John P. Marquand, and a whole raft of Edgar Allan Poe.
Last night I accidentally left my Parker and Marquand in the living room at bedtime, and when I looked at my bedside table with only Poe and Joyce and Faulkner and said in dismay, “Where are my books?” my husband just burst out laughing.
Dorothy Parker? I have to get to her stuff one day. I’ve read things written about her, but not anything written by her.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I have a long list of quotes by her, each as witty, clever and insightful as the next.
She’s famous for being the mostly-token female at the Algonquin Round Table, where New York writers like James Thurber, E.B. White, Alexander Woollcott, and Robert Benchley got drunk over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel and said witty things to each other.
She was very quick and very cutting, although also very depressed.
Her best-known poem is a light verse about suicide options and why all of them are too much trouble.
What a fun story Victoria, (though of course I feel for you that tension you have going on as your heart wars with your head is incredible). 🙂
We had tomatoes out last year that the deer stomped down so we haven’t bothered putting any out this year. The deer are Everywhere around here!
By the way, I just finished The Sheltering Sky yesterday and absolutely loved it. What an amazing page-turner! Thanks so much for that recommendation!
Bowles was an amazing writer, wasn’t he? That is the beauty and clarity of language and story for which I strive.
🙂
I can’t imagine not valuing the little fawn over tomatoes, no matter how delicious, but what a great twist you put on it.