My Feelings on Deer--Bambi Excepted

I think deer are vermin.  They are the rodents of the woods.  They leap out of nowhere and send cars reeling off the side of the road, wounded and bent, causing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of damage and untold months of car repairs, to say nothing of insurance rates..  I think deer lack character and are generally parasites of the planet.  Graceful?  Nope.  Beautiful?  Not even.  Creatures of God?  Maybe just marginally.  My personal experience with deer has been nothing but discomfort and heavy annoyance:

• Once a deer barged across the highway outside of Soda Springs one spring (yes, you read that right--not even the decency to restrict themselves to one season) as Cheryl Belnap and I were returning from class at Idaho State.  This deer OBLITERATED my newly paid for Ford Festiva.
• Deer by the thousands invaded our large corner yard in New Jersey.  You couldn't even shoo them away, the lowlifes.  They chewed our garden down to the nubs and wiped my perennials off the face of the earth.
• Last October another deer lay in wait one dark night in Wyoming as I returned from Cokeville with a carload of young girls.  As I approached, he threw himself through the air smartly glancing off the front right headlight.  That pirouette resulted in screams and subsequent wallet squeezing repairs compounded by 6 weeks of Subaru-lessness because the mechanic got bit by a spider and couldn't go to work!!
• EVERY year I have ever taught in Idaho when hunting season approaches, deer fever seizes 90% of my students rendering them glassy-eyed and useless.  Young 12 year old boys, ink still wet on their hunting licenses, doodle antlers in their writing journals, stand in the halls with arms spread to demonstrate rack sizes, write endless journal entries involving blood, guns, near misses yadayadayada.  Barbaric.  For awhile our school sponsored a "Biggest Rack" contest.  Kids, many still pre-pubescent for heaven's sake, drug in racks of all manner--some still with bloody hair attached.  One kid didn't get the memo to detach the head BEFORE he carted in the antlers, so we all had nightmares for weeks of his deer head--tongue lolling--being proudly hoisted up onto the contest table in the hall.  Bad bad.  
• Deer fever so permeates a young kid's life that I've seen them over and over obsess about getting a truck with a gun rack.  All other focus in life steps aside, and consequently so do goals and academics.  Trucks are worse than girlfriends. 

Let's just say I have strong issues.  So this morning at 6:30 while I'm sitting placidly  at the computer desk knitting and finishing up the audio of Moroni, Paco flings open the door to the office and bursts in.  I nearly infarc.  Madd: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING???????????  YOU SCARED ME TO DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??????????????????????"
Paco:  "There are deer in the backyard."  Madd: "I HATE DEER!!!!  I CAN'T STAND DEER!!  I COULD CARE LESS ABOUT DEER!!!!!"  And Paco retreats.  See what I mean?

And She's Back...

I've taken a hiatus.  But those of you who know me know that I'm on the home stretch huffing my way towards 60.  And 60 this year not only means 60 books, 60 ya-da-ya-da-ya-da's (more on that later), but also 60 blogposts!!!  So this is me screeching back onto the blog scene.  "Let's welcome her back from ???????  And let's hear it for Mad Hadder!!!!!!!!!  Whooooo!!!!  Yay!!!!!!!!!"
Yes, I have been away--both mentally and physically.  Three months worth of away, and that is probably way more away than my readers could handle.  Perhaps my readers will drift back, hopeful that Madhadder will perk up and join the general hubbub again.
"It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon..."