A heat wave hit Monday. Twenty-two degrees at 7:00 AM, warm enough to walk outside for a change. So I bundled up and took advantage of the balmy weather.
From the looks of things, our yard has been crawling with critters during the week and a half I’ve been holed up inside. Our three inches of picture perfect snow is pock-marked with deer tracks. I’m not talking a meandering trail here and there, I’m talking a hooved frenzy, a dancing-in-the-moonlight conflagration, a forest full of Bambies in our back yard.
The situation is giving me the willies. Not just because we moved to the edge of town to get away from the crowds. No, I’m spooked because the greatest concentration of hoof prints – and we’re talking snow so full of holes it makes a bad case of teenage acne look good – are right outside our bedroom window.
So what’s with our four-legged forest friends? Are they a bunch of Peeping Bambies? Or are they so hungry for July and August that they’re munching the woody stems of the two Endless Summer Hydrangea bushes beside our bedroom window?
The second theory is preferable to the first. I mean, I love the hydrangeas and don’t want them to be some woodland creature’s lunch. But the thought of a crowd of eight point bucks and doe-eyed doe witnessing our age-related sleep apnea, timing our snores, and watching us drool on our pillows is enough to give a person insomnia.
But Hiram won’t be too excited if I suggest he slog through the snow and freeze his fingers while covering the hydrangeas with chicken wire. And we don’t have a BB gun to scare them off. So I have a different solution. I’ll hang a poster of my brother holding his shotgun and wearing his hunting vest in our bedroom window.
Take that, Bambi.
Take that, eight point buck.
Take that, doe-eyed doe.
Take that and find a different place to park your peepers. You’re weirding me out!
