I still remember the first time my sister and I saw a deer when we were growing up. We were in the backseat of my parents' car as we drove down a county road that cut through farmland. Dad was the one who pointed her out. There she was, a magnificent fawn on the edge of the trees. She saw our car, turned quickly, and bounded off into the woods.
Having just moved to Maryland from Chicago, the sight of a deer in the wild was otherworldly. Hell, just seeing squirrels was enough for us. But a full on deer? With antlers? Amazing.
As the years went by, and more and more developments encroached on their land, deer became more and more common to see. You had to be careful when you drove, especially at night. You never knew when a deer would decide that it needed to cross the road at the precise moment you were driving by. We came pretty close to hitting them a few times.
The first time we saw deer in our yard it was magical. There was snow on the ground. Full moon. Christmas lights. We had just gotten back from a movie, and there they were: Three deer just standing there in our front yard. As soon as they became aware of our presence, they pranced off toward the woods nearby. My sister and I were both in high school at the time, but at that moment it was like we were kids again.
From then on, every time we came home and pulled into the driveway, we got our hopes up that we would see the deer again. At first it was disappointing because we hardly ever did. But before long it was disappointing because we hardly ever didn't. It wasn't long at all before the sight of deer in our yard became really commonplace. What was more, the sight of us became really commonplace to them. After awhile, they didn't even run away unless we chased them.
The trouble really began that summer when they discovered our garden. It actually took us a couple of days to figure out what was happening to all the tomatoes and zucchini, but one night when we were letting Rusty back in from the backyard, we saw them out there eating away. Dad yelled at them and chased them off, but they didn't even seem that scared.
A couple nights later, when it happened again, one of them actually stopped midstride, turned around to look at us, and took a crap before turning back around and walking away like he was all that.
Dad put up a makeshift fence the next day, but it didn't matter. They just knocked it down. He tried it again the next day, but they just knocked it down again. After another couple of tries, he conceded defeat and let them have the garden.
But they weren't satisfied.
They started going after the garbage cans after that. Mom's flower beds, and the crab apple tree, too. At first they just ate the crab apples that were on the ground, but then they ate the ones that were hanging on the lowest branches, and then one night I looked outside and saw one of them standing on another's back, plucking crab apples with his mouth and dropping them down to the others. A couple nights later, all the crab apples were gone.
And then it got worse.
We came home from school a few days later and the deer had broken through our bay windows and eaten everything in the kitchen. The pantry was ransacked, the cupboards were trashed, and their scat was everywhere. It was a disaster.
We boarded up the window, but the next day they just broke through the boards and had their way with our living room. When we got home that day, all the cushions on the sofa had been chewed to bits, the houseplants were in ruins, and the phone was off the hook. Two of them were passed out drunk in the living room. Apparently, they'd discovered the liquor cabinet. And about an hour after we finally managed to shoo them out of the house, a guy from the local Agway delivered an order of 12 salt licks the deer had made after they realized they'd gone through everything edible in the house.
Incredibly, it didn't stop there.
The next day, they came back and went through mom's jewelry box, stole our TV and video camera, and got our bank information off the computer. And they didn't even pretend to be scared when we got home. They just took our groceries upstairs, ate them, and went to sleep in our beds.
That was when dad suggested we get a shotgun, but mom told him she thought it was too late. She felt that if we'd done that a long time ago it might have been OK, but it wasn't right to shoot them now after basically letting them do everything they'd been doing all that time. My parents argued and argued about it, but eventually mom won like she always did. We ended up selling the house at a big loss and moving back to the city.
Anyway, that's my family's experience with deer. It all happened a long time ago, but it still feels like yesterday.
A lot of people think deer are cute, and I guess we did too at first. But it didn't take us long to learn the truth: Deer are assholes.
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