THE DEER HUNTER

Wow, long time no blog. Finally, finally, FINALLY getting over the awful flu. Of course, I couldn't be lucky enough to get the cool trendy SWINE flu, where you get a few days of sniffles and your picture in the paper. Oh no, I get stuck with the cheap-ass, low-budget three-week long horkorama that is the ORDINARY flu. No fame. No glory. Just dirty looks from the cat when my coughing into the wee hours disturbs his beauty rest by dislodging him from my pillow. That's one nasty cough - I think my left lung is in a landfill somewhere along with 40 boxes of generic tissues. But I'm all better now.

Unfortunately, while I was occupied with trying to keep my lungs on the inside of my body, my garden woke up and realized winter was over. Everything immediately started growing like crazy (everything being weeds), which was the signal for the deer to come in and start eating the good stuff, like the apple tree.

This awoke the primal instinct in the old man (mighty hunter), who decided to show those effin deer who's the boss, once and for all. Well, he underwent several changes of persona during this little episode. First he was Elmer Fudd, with his trusty musket, vowing to get rid of not only the effin deer, but the wascally wabbits as well. Number of deer eliminated by this process: zero.

Deciding to scale back the technology a bit, he morphed into Hiawatha, stalking the wily forest-dwellers with his crossbow. Number of deer killed: zero, although several of the rabbits looked slightly nervous.

Being persistent, if not very accurate, he then took up the Dennis the Menace approach, and, armed with a bag of marbles from the dollar store, stood in the yard taking pot shots at them with a slingshot. The deer seemed to like this, as it gave them something to look at while they were finishing off the clematis.

When he was finally reduced to becoming Og the cave man and hurling rocks and invective at them, I realized that it might just be an opportune time to (once again) broach the (touchy) subject of finishing off that deer fence. Amazingly enough, he agreed. " Yes. Too hard kill effin deer. Og do fence now. Woman right". Ah, evolution.