Interesting post at Two--Four. There are two things about deer that most people will agree with:
1. Deer are beautiful animals.
2. Deer are good to eat.
I will tell you two more things that I have learned in the last couple of years due to my relatively close contact with deer.
1. Deer are stupid.
2. Deer are mean.*
When deer become overpopulated, as they have in many urban areas that have banned killing them, they get hungry, and they are very large, strong rats with sharp hooves. They will kick down gates, tear up fences and strip gardens and lawns utterly bare.
If a fawn is driven to distress enough that it produces vocalizations, it sounds about the same as a young goat bleating. The real tragedy here is that this woman had to resort to beating it to death with a shovel when she could have just popped it in the head with a .22.
That's what I would have done, and then I would see what fawn tastes like.
*We recently had an incident where a bunch of our does ganged up and ran and beat a buck nearly to death. This buck may never recover. A couple of years ago a bunch of our does ganged up together and ran another doe to death. To death. Who knows why? Like I said, they are stupid and they are mean.
I got attacked by a doe once when I was a kid. Those hooves hurt a lot.
ReplyDeleteI'm not bitter about the attack. But I'm also not fooled by the appearance of nature. A lot of wild animals look cute, but here's the basic reality we all need to remember:
Wild animals don't like people.
They may be cool to look at, and people may admire them for their strengths, but no one should be under any illusion that an animal of the wild will love them for what they do like a pet dog might. People may save an animal from death, but that same animal may repay them by eating them. Or clawing them. Or giving them rabies.
Nature is beautiful, but she's mean, too. We need to be careful out there.
The thing about deer is that they are quite vicious toward their own kind. Most animals, especially herbivores, when they come into conflict with each other, will fight only until one backs down and runs away. But when a herd of does suddenly turns against one of its own, they keep at it until their target is dead.
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