MindSpinner

Shortly after my children returned home from their Father’s Day celebrations with their dad, Dark-Haired Daughter called on the phone, all the way from the back yard. “We have a present for you. Come outside.”

When I stepped outside they were standing at the back of the yard near the trees, petting a wild deer as if it were the family dog and feeding it carrots. It was a thin deer, as thin as if it were winter out, and it was apparently unafraid. The weather’s been dry here for so long that the grass has turned to straw and crunches like the husks of insects under our feet. I water only the garden, the shrubs and the trees to keep them alive. Farmers have but half the usual hay and fear losing their crops. I guess that it is the drought that brought the deer to nibble carrots from human hands and nip the leaves from the top of a newly planted blueberry bush. Still we are enchanted by a wild thing. I know. Deer may eat my garden this year. Deer will likely eat my apples when there are apples to eat. But since I was small I have felt a pang of grief to know that wild things are afraid of me because I am human, and so when a deer comes to call and does not start and run, it is as if some awful fall from grace has been undone.