May 28th, 2007
My Ongoing Battle with Deer
When I was about three years old, my parents decided to take me to a nearby petting zoo. As is the case with most children that age, I was absolutely enthralled with the strange creatures that I had never seen before. There were a herd of relatively domesticated deer that were all gathered in one spot, and I decided to it would be good to get a closer look.
So ice cream cone in hand, I approached the herd of deer and began attempting to communicate with them. It soon became clear that their interests were non-social and rather selfish, as one of them decided that it would take advantage of its superior size and bully me out of my ice cream cone.
Deer 1 / Jiyan 0
That was a traumatizing day for me. I agonized over my emasculating defeat for some time until it dawned on me that I would not be able to progress in my development towards manhood unless I had my revenge.
I hatched a plan and convinced my parents to take me back to the petting zoo several days later. I decided that if they were going to take something of mine, then I would reciprocate and take something of theirs. Unfortunately, deer don’t tend to carry a lot on their persons, so my choices were limited.
Taunting a deer with my conquest
It was an important lesson for me to learn as a young child: it is not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog. If you are bullied out of your ice cream cone by a larger creature, you need to pick yourself up of the floor and come right back at that bully even if the bully is a domesticated deer and ‘coming back’ means stealing that deer’s pebble-sized droppings.
I am literally rolling on the floor right now.
I grew up on a farm in Silver Run, Md. When we were very young, a friend of ours thought the goat poop was chocolate covered peanuts. Need I say more?
Poem,
It is unfortunate to make that mistake as I can attest to. The sad thing is that my parents obviously felt it was better to take pictures of me playing with deer feces rather than stop me.
Jiyan