Spirituality

She grazes peacefully in a small open area. The air is crisp with just a slight chill. The beauty of the turning leaves sparking with frost in the early morning sunlight seems to compliment her beauty. Her tawny fur is now turning to a more somber grayish tone winter coat. She gracefully moves as she grazes and gently moves her busy tail allowing tuffs of white fur to peak out from underneath it.

Behind a screen of burnt amber, a young buck stands contentedly watching his sleek delicate mate. Occasionally she gracefully lifts her head, twitches a velvety ear, looks up toward him with large soft dark brown eyes, and her cute black nose tests the air for signs of danger. His thoughts wander to the cedar grove they will find as they move deeper into the forest. It will be a warm secure place for the two of them to yard up when the snows come, and in the spring they can begin a family. Sometime around May she will bear her first fawn, maybe even twins. Her life expectancy is fifteen to twenty years and she may bring as many as thirty-one beautiful creatures like herself into this world.

She lifts her head again ready to trot up beside her mate, but her nostrils are now stinging with the scent of danger. Fear and panic wrestle to take control of her once peaceful mind. Every muscle in her body becomes tense as adrenalin rushes in. Her ears stand erect and her tail goes up revealing all of the white fur. She is briefly taken over by confusion as she desperately tries to decide in which direction lays her escape route.

She leaps with her front legs stretched out to carry her to safety, but it is too late. The deadly crack of gunfire shatters the peaceful silence, pain surges into her mind, and her limp body falls to the cold ground. The buck feels helpless as he sees his mate now lying in the grass with her life force oozing into the earth. He flees in terror filled with a sense of loss. She will bear no spotted fawn in the spring and never again will her slender body move gracefully through the woodlands. It took months to create her life, but only a few painful minutes to snuff it out. And for what?

I understand a life being ended to provide the needed food and clothing for a family. I wonder though how much of that fallen deer’s body is actually used for food and clothing. I was told by a hunter, “You only get a few steaks from a deer anyway, and now as I an older I cannot see anyone taking the life of such a beautiful creature for just a few steaks”. I have never met a person that turned the deer’s hide into clothing. Perhaps like me most people feel the fur looks better on the animal, but if not used for clothing what happens to the hide.

I hear complaints about deer destroying gardens. I once found a deer taking a chunk out of one of my pumpkins. I was not happy, but then I laughed as he spit it out and stomped out of the garden as if to say if you cannot plant anything better, I am out of here. He had disfigured the pumpkin but given me a story to tell that always brings a smile. Later I had a beautiful flowering bush stripped to bare branches overnight. Again nature provided balance. In payment for the flowers and leaves, which grew back, I was given a performance of a pair of fawn twins resembling human preteens first learning to dance. Their mother perhaps was a bit frustrated at their prancing antics, but I was thoroughly entertained. The entertainment stretched out from their white spots slowly being replaced with tawny fur to changing to a grayish winter coat, which on those two could never be called somber.

In my flower and herb gardens a few flowers disappeared, but I received payment. I wished I owned a video camera as a doe chased a cat away from the bird feeder. I wished it again when the next day not to be outdone by his mother a fawn chased a duck away from the cracked corn. The flowers and leaves if not eaten fall off as the seasons change and are forgotten. The smiles given to me by the deer, even if I am not lucky enough to catch on film, are mine to keep always.

I have seen cars drive by with a lifeless body draped over the hood. I think of the buck watching his mate’s life being ended, and wonder what the hunter will do with the limp body if the meat has been left too long to be safe to eat. I suppose those hunters can always pay a taxidermist to stuff the head to be hung on a wall. If would seem that fate would better fit an animal that has accidentally had its life ended on a highway.

Last spring, a bobcat because of food in the woods being scare attacked a domestic cat. So where does that leave the theory that hunters are needed to control the deer population? Would not the animals such as bobcats control the population if man killed only when food is needed? Each creature fulfills its own important role in keeping the population of all woodland creatures regulated, until man turns the woodlands into shopping malls and resorts. The moose I read about who tried to check out the local shopping was tranquilized and removed.

The more land that is designated to be left in its natural state the more chances wildlife has to form its own checks and balances. If all hunting and fishing were banned and people began enjoying the beauty of seeing living creatures in the wild perhaps the value of all life would be seen. The human population might even look upon each other a little more kindly. This may sound like an ideological dream, but would it not be a beautiful reality if all guns were laid to rest?

Stop and think, is there anything more precious than life in any form?

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