Deer Trail Death

Hey there. I hope you are having a nice morning so far. I woke up to the sounds of my husband's laughter as he explained that our dog had run into the house holding a 4 ft long stuffed Grinch toy in his mouth. We don't own a 4 ft long stuffed replica of the Grinch--for some reason.

So really, whats going on is our dog steals shit from our neighbor's yard...daily. To date, this winter, the following items have been brought into our home that don't belong to us: a child-sized red ruby slipper, a stuffed kangaroo, a stuffed cocker spaniel with a santa hat on, 3-4 large rope dog toys, a small stuffed duck-looking japanamation thing with a pink bow on its head, a child's blue headband, a giraffe beanie baby, literally 20-35 tennis balls, a lacrosse ball, a soccer ball, a plastic power ranger, a child's ballet shoe, and now, this 4ft long, neon green, grinch stuffed animal. I don't understand whats going on. Do they have a hole in their wall? How is he getting this shit? Or are the kids that live there just really uncontrollable and throw their stuff outside on a regular basis? I don't know. Either way, my dog is a thief, and I owe my neighbor upwards of $200 for all of his children's belongings that my animal has destroyed.

 Alright alright so speaking of neighbors, lets get on with it already. I live in a suburban area that is populated with various forms of wildlife. We often see wild turkeys running in packs down the street--**Side note**wild turkeys are fucking huge. They look like velociraptors.--as well as lots of bunnies and squirrels and raccoons and song birds and what have you. We also are lucky enough to have quite a large deer population, which is odd considering we are an actual neighborhood, and not a bunch of homes separated by acres and acres of forest. When I first moved here, being a city person, I was really excited to see deer literally walking down my street.

  Over time, this excitement began to wane a bit, but I still jumped up if I saw a buck run through our front yard or something. So I think we've pretty much established that I'm a nerdbomb, and I like deer. Alright, lovely. So wheres the conflict you say.

 After reaching our first winter in this house, we were driving home from the grocery store at around dusk. We turned off the main road on to the street that is the entrance to our neighborhood. This street has a walking path on the left, and woods on the right. On the left side, there are only a few houses, and these houses are only 30-50 feet off the road, so fairly close. We came up on the first house, which has a huge deck on the back of it, and I noticed that what looks like a search light was illuminating the entire backyard. In this spot light I saw at least 25 deer. Because I'm sometimes slow, I began to freak out and was all like "holy shit, what the junk, Jimmy do you see all those deer, what the hell why are they all standing in that spotlight, why would deer stand in a spotlight, do you think they are having a family reunion or an orgy or something?"

My husband looked at me like I just asked him how to chew gum, and goes "....There's corn on the ground. That's why they are there. They're eating corn." Oh. Right. So Apparently the people that live in this house enjoy feeding the deer. Ok fine whatever. At first I'm jealous that they thought of this before I did. I want to feed the deer! Fun! But. A few weeks past, I begin to see how wrong I am. Feeding the deer is not fun. It is anti-fun. It is a death trap. 

 Fast forward to today. After almost either hitting, or almost being hit by deer over 50 times, at seemingly any time of day as I pass this house during the fall/winter, I am beyond over the magic of deer. They no longer have the same majesty and grace they once did. Now when I see them all I think about is how stupid they look standing in the middle of the street just fucking staring at me, or how pissed I am going to be when one of these beasts inevitably runs into the side of my car in an attempt to reach the delicious corn on the other side of the street.  But then I realized something: it's not the deer's fault they are dumb and have a passion for corn. The fault really lies with the aholes who don't realize that attracting deer to their backyard with corn forces said deer to cross the only road in and out of the neighborhood more than they would normally, thus making me 100 x more likely to bust my Corolla seeing as I rarely drive less then 10 mph over the speed limit. Sigh.

So today's post is dedicated to the geniuses in my neighborhood who feel the need to feed the deer every fall/winter: Dear Ethel and Artie--I can only assume you are old as hell and have the time and extra pension money to waste on industrial sized bags of feed corn--I get that in your later years, nature suddenly becomes one of the only things that isn't scary or trying to scam you out of your savings, and I can respect that. But for the love of Charlie Murphy, can you please at least place the feed corn further back into the woods, and then invest in some good binoculars or something? Because the way things are going now, I'm going to end up hitting one of your precious deer, and I don't think any of us want that, and you really don't want that, because if push comes to shove, I'm submitting our story to Judge Judy-or whatever her equivalent is now-and you will be buying me a new front bumper or drivers side door. So come on you guys. Do the neighborhood a favor. Thanks.

~Maria