Thursday, July 1, 2010

Chasing a buck

As I was walking up the hill behind the stadium to my car today, I saw some burly college boys by the side of the road.  Were they messing with my car?  No.  They'd noticed the deer that live on the steep hill above the road, and one of them was climbing the hill with a big pointy stick.  They were goading each other on.  I've seen a beautiful buck there (tried to take a picture, but with just an iPhone it's impossible -- they are camouflaged, you know?), and they'd seen it.

"That one has four points!" one said.  It was like watching them become cave men: stick, animal, grunt.

I felt protective of the deer, my special buck whom I'd watched for several minutes the other day in a moment of peacefulness.  Although at the same time I thought, "Steep hill, clumsy oafs -- that deer is going to vanish so fast they won't know what happened."

And yet the boys thought they could do this.  Stick, animal, grunt.

As I came up the hill toward them, I glared.  The presence of a woman?  The presence of a mother figure?  It was funny to watch them turn on each other now that the Other had arrived.  One of them picked up his bag, and as he drifted away from the others he said to them, "Man, you came all the way up here just to chase a deer?"

The other two put on their helmets and together hopped on a single teeny tiny scooter and rode away.

Boys and their toys.

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