Blacktail, Whitetail

This little whitetail deer (photographed on my birthday two days ago) is still in the process of becoming. Ribs show, although winter is coming soon, sparse coat is partly shed and not yet fully renewed. Small antlers are still in velvet. And he has to get his sustenance from grass!

That excellent poet and friend, Lucia Perillo, lives west in the country of the blacktail deer.How delighted I was to find this poem in The New Yorker.


BLACKTAIL

Like tent caterpillars, we cover the landscape with mesh
because of the deer, the ravenous deer.
They enter the yard with the footwork
of cartoon thieves—the stags wear preposterous
inverse chandeliers, the does bearing fetuses
visibly kicking inside of their cage. And who
can not-think of that crazy what-if: what if
a hoof tears through? Would you call
the dogcatcher or an ambulance?

The problem’s their scale—you might as well park
a Cadillac in the house. Or go be a hunter
inside a big plastic goose, a fibreglass burger
on top of a hamburger stand. The way they tiptoe
past the bird feeder, rattling the seed
the squirrels have spilled. Then they eat
something outrageous, like the pansy
all the way up on the stoop. Before they leap
into the ravine with a noise like cymbals!

But isn’t that how things end, with a cymbal crash? Leaving
you at the window with not even your rage.
Because you cannot rage at such delicate skeletons—
that is a social misdemeanor—though they have stepped
toward us the way the founding fathers
must have once approached the natives, with their arms
extended, though they bore disease.

Lucia Perillo

The New Yorker, August 25, 2014

Jays at the feeder, also on my birthday. Lucia would be more likely to have the Stellar's Jay.
On the news of the Buson 100: the first day was easy. but it gets harder each day! And I am only on day three! Wish me luck!