I was driving home last night.
On the last leg of the journey the line of cars in front of me started swerving radically to the left. I did as well when I drew up next to the source.
A deer. Lying in the middle of the road. Vertically, north and south so to speak, as opposed to across the road.
Took my breath away.
Every time I see that I have the same illogical thought. We invaded their world with roads and cars. They are eternally bewildered by that rape and die because of it.
We need roads. We need cars. I don't want to walk to work. It would take hours and might prove to be the ultimate factor in dissuading me from continuing the sheer stupidity of what I am doing to myself for money. Money from which I derive no benefit. Money that passes through my hands into the hands of those who own me.
But I digress.
Deer are innocence. Beauty. Grace. They are nature. We are the antithesis of nature.
And we kill them? They should be killing us.
But they are too highly evolved for that.
My thoughts stray to hunting. I despise it.
You can forward all the arguments in the book as defense of hunting. I understand them all. They make sense on the surface of things.
But for me it always comes down to that moment. That moment just before the trigger is pulled or the arrow flies.
I don't understand what it is in a human's brain that allows them to sight a deer - standing peacefully in the woods - contemplate it for seconds - and then kill it.
There is a disconnect there that I will never understand.
Dead squirrels in the road don't bother me. They live in my attic and do not pay rent.
Chipmunks bother me. I hate that moment when a chipmunk runs under my car and I look in the rearview mirror to see if I have killed it.
Did not feel a thunk - did not hear one - but I see no trace of the chipmunk.
Drives me crazy.
Cats, dogs - dead in the road - brings tears.
But there's something about a deer. The magic. The majesty.
Their death at our hands points an accurate and accusing finger at our worthlessness.
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