Monday, June 29, 2020

They've Overcome Their Shyness

The opening to Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn has a lovely description of the titular critter, from which I will extract a relevant passage:


She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery.

While Mr Beagle's prose is lovely, and he is capable of wrenching at his readers' heartstrings, he really needs to get acquainted with These Deer These Days. I mean, shy doesn't even enter into the picture, by which I mean this picture:




It's not any different at night... I was walking the property and saw that someone had, oddly, left a sawhorse near the main footpath... it took a while to realize that the sawhorse, while remaining stationary, was a bit too diaphanous. It took a while before the deer, and its buddy (I can recognize three of them on the property, a doe, a young stag, and a larger stag with a partially broken antler) even considered moving from the delicious apple tree foliage they were browsing on:




I'm starting to suspect that a speciation event has occurred, and that this population of Odocoileus virginianus has evolved into Odocoileus impudicus. Pretty soon, they'll be sauntering up to me to root for muffins in my lunchbag.

Post title swiped from this classic song.

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