Deer Meanness

A lot of deer live in this fine city, and I am pleased to share sidewalks and road ways with them. I like them. Yet it is unrequited liking.
Last week I was hiking through the miles of trails coursing Riverview Park, and was arrested by a herd of deer. I don't mean they pulled out badges, I mean that there were a lot of them, the nearest one about twenty feet away.
The meandering wooded trails bent archly. Upon looping around one of them, the herd was there like the G20 Summit with fur. They stood still at odd angles to one another, neatly spaced by a fathom, thin saplings poking up in between them. This was a unified gathering of deer.
It was a form of arrest, because I had to stop walking. This type of proximity is reserved for fables. No muse worth tapping into would waste the opportunity, nor will I.

A herd of deer in the woods takes more than a few seconds to take in because they blend in with wooded areas. This was a nicely camoflaged conference. Looking around slowly, the number of deer eased into awareness. The one closest to me gave me a slow once over, like it was checking the meter on the side of your house. Then it looked away, towards the second nearest antlerless deer. Might have been bucks, could have been does, might have been the season they drop their antlers.
The second deer gave me the look. I saw the same look on one of the foreign exchange students back at college. It's a cultured expression of mistrust. The closest deer gave me another glance, this time, clearly in a defensive though still dissmissive frame of mind. Some of the others in the herd were the first to speak.

"Why is that asshole standing there," I overheard a faun say to it's brethren laying peacefully under a sparse bush.
I could discern the voice of a buck by it's depth and resonance. "Just ignore the moth eaten piece of shit. We're here, and asshole is over there. Fuck 'em." the elder animal said, not loudly, but he knew I could hear.
Then the one closest to me, so near I could almost pet it, turned to me again, and said, "What are you looking at, Shithead?"
Then it turned it's head away, as if I wasn't there. But it knew I was still there. The next closest deer turned to me and said, "Why don't you bring a gun, Hiawatha?"
Don't they understand that is was they that accosted me?

Failing My Audition

I'm remorsing the mistake I made. I should have put in my upper plate before going to the audition, but it was for a yogurt commercial. All it said on the prospectus was that the 'lucky chosen' would eat a spoonful of Crackteef and affect a look of sincere pleasure and well being. I tried explaining to the exec that I wouldn't have to smile or chew, but when she asked, "Do you have the other half of your dentures with you," I had a feeling I wouldn't get a chance to sit next to Johnni Grant Custer on a couch.

It's not just childish dissappointment because I don't get to be in the commercial or get paid. I've admired everything Johnni ever did, except for a few bad movie roles, which all famous people have sometimes. She's taken on a stellar role as spokesperson for a number of important social causes. If it wasn't for her, most people would have never heard of Powder Village in Haiti, or the Bolivian Bugs Initiative. Those are the clever names really connected people think up for their movements. Every time I see her on the Crackteef commercials, it galls me that I can't sit next to her in a really special kind of relationship. It's what Crackteef is supposed to be all about.