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| "No! Not in my desk chair. Out!" |
It was a once in a lifetime, dream-come-true cliché—a
hunting trip for the men in our family through the wilds of Texas. It was a
rugged, manly exercise in the production of testosterone. There were guns.
There were animals sporting massive branching horns on their skulls. There were
pop tarts. It was man heaven.
Disclaimer: Unlike a bunch of city folks raised on Disney
and PBS, we are country people. We know that ducks don’t wear pants, that
‘possums have the most teeth of any mammal on earth, and that given a chance, a
Bald Eagle will carry off your pure bred puppy to feed to its chicks—piece by
bloody piece. Mother Nature is a b . . . booger. Hunting is what animals do to animals, and
if my biology teachers are right, well, then we’re animals. Right?
Sherwood went hunting with Aric and Adam in Texas and shot a
white stage (a kind of elk.) Two hundred pounds of meat came in the mail and
went into my freezer. Delicious. Frankly, I’d have eaten the hooves if they’d
sent those.
The white stag’s mounted head came in a crate, on a
semi—that stopped traffic on our street. The trucker, mumbling something about
damage to the crate, insisted on cracking open the box.
“Lady, the last time I saw something like that I was at a
ski lodge,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding.
Unfortunately, we don’t own a ski lodge, and it’s been a
real challenge finding just the right spot to hang, Attila the White Stag.
“Not there. It’ll poke out the children’s eyes.”
“You cannot hang it there. It’ll breathe down my neck during
Sunday dinner.”
“And if you hang it over the fireplace we’ll have to tear
down the mantle so the horns don’t hit the roof.”
So now it’s on the wall of our bedroom, staring at me. Or it
was.
Until yesterday, when Sherwood stumbling around in the dark
looking for his pants, bent down and then stood up, smacking Attila the White
Stag right off the wall.
Attila tumbled down off the wall and stabbed Sherwood in the
thumb with his enormous horns.
I heard the unmistakable sounds of white stag violence and
husband cussing, and jumped up out of a sound sleep screaming, “Oh no! It’s
attacking!”
The screaming escalated—mine!
And that’s how Attila the White Stag continues wreaking
revenge, beyond the grave.
Linda (Elk Burgers) Zern
