Bad Deer

Driving through my old neighborhood I saw a fawn on the railroad tracks that cross Fair Avenue where the hoods used to smoke cigarettes. A road littered with litter and an unsavory shirtless sort, milling about, slurping polar pops, and arguing with themselves. Billboards behind them declaring Mental Health Matters for a levy in last year's election, and Bed Bug Busters, and EZ Payday Loans. The neighborhood ain't what it used to be. 

That speckled fawn was just standing there by herself, seemingly perplexed and scared, on twig-like legs, waiting to get hit by a train or attacked by someone's stray pitbull. Immediately, I thought, "Where's her mother? What kind of mother would let her fawn play on the railroad tracks?" 

Then my mind took over, as it has a way to do, and I began to wonder if there are bad deer moms out there like there are bad people moms, and if this was but one of many examples. If they leave hot curling irons on the bathroom sink. Or pills laying around. If they drop their fawns off at grandma's to go barhopping more weekends than not. If they do drugs in front of their fawns, smoke cigarettes while cooking breakfast at 2 in the afternoon, hungover, drinking a beer, ashes falling in the scrambled eggs, giving the fawn an improperly washed bottle full of spoiled milk because "the milkman don't come no more."

Or if they use their child support for beer and liquor and bring home a new buck every weekend, with names like Booger, Rat, 8 Ball, or Mitch, that scare the fawn because they have a skin condition and a spiderweb tattoo on their face and wear leather jackets with patches of demons and devils all over them. They have prominent scars and call the fawn "brat" because they don't remember her name. The kind of buck that smells like motor oil and sweat and looks like he eats glass and drinks kerosene and would be good in a knife fight. He has a limp from being shanked in the joint, a wallet on a chain, and a teardrop tatted on his cheekbone. 

The fawn hears her mom being murdered while she eats a bowl of Cheerios, in orange Kool-Aid, and watches Barney in the living room. The carpet littered with dirty diapers and speckled with cigarette burns. But mom wasn't murdered. Mom's just fine, fixing her makeup and leather skirt as she oozes from the bedroom. Her fur disheveled, mascara running, and stinking like a gas station bathroom. The buck snorts from behind the door and yells at mom to make him a (expletive) cheeseburger and bring him a (expletive) beer. Then the fawn catches an unfortunate glimpse of his naked buck body in an open sliver of the busted bathroom door where he is taking a shit, contorted like a pretzel, like he was hit by an 18 wheeler, so he can do a quick line of coke on the bathroom sink, his teeth nearly rotted out of his head, his antlers in a serious state of decay. A roll of toilet paper on one of his jagged antlers. 

Or if mom's on social media under the handle "Doebaby69" selling "content only." Filtering all her pictures. Duck-facing her way through life, one post at a time. Quoting Marilyn Monroe. If you can't handle me at my worst...that sort of kitschy thing. She includes the fawn in pictures when she wants to play good mom, all like, "Family time with my babes xoxo." Or on Mother's Day, all like, "My babes are my WORLD (heart, heart, heart.)" Her life can be spelled out in emojis. But she is strung out the next day, fishing for a new sugar daddy, calling JFS to get a new food card because "Mitch," the buck with the rotting teeth and antlers, and the STD, apparently, stole her last card when she let him borrow it to cut his coke. "How my baby gonna eat?" she screams into the phone hysterically at a lady eating her third bag of Cheetos, a Snickers, and drinking a Diet Coke.

Never mind the bed bugs, the roaches, the fleas, which are like warring gangs, or the dead cat in the bathroom, or the rotted bottles that have rolled under the piss-stained couch, or the blood stains on the carpet, or the mold, all that matters is her next fix. Then her sister, known as $Hoochiebaby22, who sells content only, comes over and crashes on the couch, slurring her words, going on and on about "the stairway to heaven" and her new religion, crystal methodism, and how the evil trolls at FDS (Fawn Protective Services) took her four fawns: Narcan, Narcotika, Nebula and Nova, which she cries about ad nauseum on Facebook, while getting high, ranting about how she hopes this is a bad batch laced with fetty so she can go to Heaven and see her crackhead-ex, her "ride or die," who died two years earlier, shot by a hunter, da po-lice, or in a drive-by, depending on how high she is when she tells the story.  

So, in my head, that is the story of that little fawn, standing on the train tracks in my old neighborhood for whatever reason. But in reality, I thought as I pulled up to my house, overly happy the transients who amble by during the day didn't leave any beef jerky or pop tart wrappers from their "blessing box" while I was at work to pay taxes that help pay for their services and food and medical insurance and housing and the salary of the lady who eats the Cheetos and Snickers and drinks the Diet Coke, there are no bad deer moms. It isn't in them. It's not in their nature. 

Deer have not been corrupted by thinking errors and entitlement and sin and years of bad choices compounded generationally with a massive influx of cultural degeneration and spoon feeding. They don't feel special or entitled. They just exist and live and fend for themselves and their families and leave everyone else the fuck alone. You'll never be robbed, raped, or murdered by a deer. You'll never be cheated or betrayed by a deer. The don't do drugs, or molest children, or break into houses or cars, or start wars, or shoot up schools, or lie to anyone. No one is assaulted by a deer, and no old people are being swindled by deer selling bogus replacement roofs or fake insurance policies. And they don't get Botox or quote Marilyn Monroe. 

If that fawn was alone, it was only because his mom was dead, hit by a car, eaten by a coyote, or shot by a hunter. Being terrible and poor excuses for parents is exclusively a human characteristic — higher-thinking mammals who have fancy things like religion and God and rational thought and science and math and culture and are the most important things on the planet, according to themselves. They've built temples to worship themselves. They subject animals to cages for entertainment and experiments to test their products and raise them to slaughter and eat them all while expecting peace on earth. 

This is why I don't eat animals, but why I might eat a pan-seared crackhead on a brioche bun splattered with barbeque or honey mustard and diced pickles, if served properly. This is why I love animals more than people and why that will never change in a million years. This is why I have serious doubts about who has souls and who doesn't. Because my mind wonders and sometimes doesn't think normal thoughts.