Deer Dog Deer
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
Did we ever talk Deer Dog Deer?
No? For real?
<checks diary, flips pages, consults calendar, adjusts abacus>
I guess maybe not. Huh. Must be losing a step.
Well, grab a can of Fanta and pull up a chair, this is one you probably won't want to miss.
The setting: an absolutely beautiful sunny Vermont afternoon, with Sarah and I standing in our bedroom, gazing through the second floor window. Outside, green as far as you can see; the slope of a low mountain in the near distance, blue nearly cloudless sky, American Cardinals flitting about.
I know, I know you can practically smell the serenity.
Sarah and I are gazing (mesmerized, really), taking it all in.
We stand overlooking a horse pasture, which the previous owner designed to raise geldings, but apparently never so much as walked a horse within 1,000 miles of the place. Now the pasture offers a sea of meticulously manicured lawn, mowed into a diamond pattern and wrapped by the inevitable weathered brown wooden fence.
"Look! A deer!"
This Sarah shout-whispered, because she has a strange peccadillo about being overheard, and often examines her phone to see if it's automatically calling someone before she spills some beans.
In this case, we're separated by said deer through multiple panes of glass - and a good 50+ yards of distance.
And so, indeed, we looked.
Hell, it was practically Bambi, lazily walking onto the scene.
What did we do in a previous life to deserve this? This...gift, straight out of nature's central casting? We ooh'd and ahh'd as the deer slowly strutted, following a path along the fence. It nibbled at grass; it paused, craned its neck, twitched its ears; it heard the rustle of the trees and sensed the movements of squirrels.
Everything just as it should be.
But only for a very few seconds because, then, I swear, for real - on my right hand and consideration for all that is holy - this deer turned into a goddamn dog. No, really, it sorta morph-globbed with an action so smooth it was as if it had been performed hundreds of times before.
This dog was a similar shade of light brown to the deer, but distinct in its own right: It was half the size, it had flat ears, a longer tail - and and the lope of fifty less pounds. It sniffed the ground as any canine might; it's pace was different, it bristled with doggie confidence.
Yes. Yes, this was in broad daylight. Shame on you for asking.
And so this 'dog' glides along across multiple stanchions of fence, time ticking a few seconds at the pace of a blind and lazy tortoise. And then - as if to prove a point - this dog changed. Right back into a deer. Maybe it metabolized or metastasized, or shape-shifted? Hell I dunno what to call it, do I look like a scientist to you?
Whatever happened, I can tell you as sure as the sun rises in the east, it became a deer again.
Of course, my mind was playing tricks. I hadn't eaten enough Muesli for breakfast. Or maybe a rush of blood to the head from standing up too fast. Of course it was an illusion: A weird mound in the grass or maybe just a strange bend in the fence.
"Beautiful deer," I quietly say, acting the normal. Sarah responds in time, "wow, sure was," straight as a stick.
And so we trot downstairs and busy ourselves with house things: The trash is taken out. The living room vacuumed. Computers are checked. I believe Sarah went ahead and made a smoothie.
Ten minutes later we meet in the kitchen and she freezes. She's holding her breath, she appears paralyzed by unseen forces. She stares me down.
"What?" I ask, knowing imperceptibly what was coming.
"Did you..." she starts.
"I did...did you?" I caution.
"The dog...a dog, or...the deer and then the dog and then..."
"A deer?"
"A deer. A dog, yes," she says distantly, maybe not to me, but mostly to herself - as if to check her lunacy, to understand how tight her grasp on reality.
The hair on my neck stood on end. A subtle chill. Goosebumps. Everything you'd imagine.
She saw it. I saw it. We both saw it.
We both couldn't fathom to acknowledge it in the moment.
But it did happen. We were both there: Two minds and four eyes.
And absolutely, that deer turned into a goddamn dog, and back into a deer again.
Deer Dog Deer
What does it mean? Nothing.
Of course.
Probably? Or maybe it means everything.
If you must wonder, you probably have to consider the implications.
What walks amongst us? What happens when we aren't looking? Is the next deer you see just a deer or, maybe...something else entirely? Maybe sometimes - when they are sure no human is looking - it lets its guard down
Most likely, of course, whatever it is, it means well. It's not harmful.
It's just a deer. Then a dog. Then a deer again.
And now we can both say, when you happen to see one of these on your own: I told you so.
