Deer At Home on the Range

I used to think seeing the deer in our backyard was romantic. I was a victim of having seen Bambi and read the Yearling as a child. Then my son got Lyme disease. It took the whole summer to diagnose and was very painful. Watching my son receive shots and IV’s for weeks, those deer morphed into very large rodents in my eyes, bringing the equivalent of the black plague into my home in the form of a poppy seed sized insect. I combed over my children like a crazed chimp after a day of play for any signs of the critters and am proud to say I have pulled off more than ten in my careful searches.

Two more children caught Lyme disease in the following year, but we saw the bulls eyes around the bites and promptly got antibiotics. The problem was the deer rendered our half acre lot a constant danger for outdoor play. We needed to send Bambi and his friends packing.

We tried spraying “Deer Be Gone” on the bushes, but truthfully, I felt I could almost hear the does saying, “Oh look honey,” to their favorite bucks, “The Italian restaurant is putting out a new vinaigrette on the Hosta, we should go to Antonetti’s tonight.” Those bushes always seemed to get munched first.

Psychological warfare didn’t work either, for the month of July, we bar-b-qued every night. I wanted the smell of smoked meat to permeate the woods adjacent to us as if to warn them, “Carnivores live here.”

Assembling the family, we instituted “The Call.” If anyone saw a deer on our property, they were to yell, as loud as they could, “DEER!” and everyone young and old would stop what they were doing and make a charge out the back door at the creatures, screaming a’la Braveheart style and waving their arms. The deer would startle a bit and move on in a leisurely fashion as if to say, “How rude, we were eating here.”

Our collective charge had the emotional weight of someone talking on a cell phone at a restaurant. They couldn’t quite blow us off, but it was close. We tried using pots and pans and toy drums and instruments. My son’s trombone playing didn’t even require a cautious head raise by the lead doe. When he finished blasting out the Notre Dame Victory March, the deer casually walked out of our yard with scarcely a tail flick.

“Must be Michigan fans.” I thought.

We needed a battle plan.

Watching some nature show with my children, inspiration struck. Using branches that had fallen during a thunderstorm the prior weekend, my oldest son and I tied them antler style to the front grill of our Suburban. That weekend we waited eagerly for the Deer to arrive.

It was Saturday morning, 7:11 am, when the unfortunate buck stepped out of the forsythia to get some morning blueberries, freshly planted. I was in the kitchen starting breakfast and writing up the schedule for the day when I saw him. He was a picture perfect 8 point buck, straight out of the Disney studios, standing against the yellow blossoms, eating my berry bushes. I got my car keys and sneakers and stole out to the big blue SUV. I got in quietly. I buckled up. I turned on the ignition with a roar. The deer looked up, alert.

I swung the car into gear and drove onto the grass, flashing my lights, antlers waving and beeping my horn. That deer practically flew out of the place. I could also hear the satisfying thicket crunching sounds of many of his friends clearing out. “There’s a New buck in town.” I crowed at the fleeing pests, as I got out and patted my car. “Mine are bigger than yours!” I sang as I took the branches off my car and proceeded to do a victory lap around the back, wearing the branches like a crown.

My husband took the opportunity to re-park the car. “I’m sure that was against the Home Owner’s Association rules.” He said quietly.

Okay, so it probably was a bit over the top and the deer have since returned in force, unimpressed by my more creative antics. Recently, I gained perspective on the whole situation. My brother-in-law bought a house and the painter that was putting finishing touches on one of the rooms called him because a large black bear was grazing about his back yard. Suddenly, the deer seem pretty benign to me. I may not love them, but I can live with them. Nothing brings about peace like some third party with a bigger stick.

Quantum Leap Year

If you’ve ever studied Quantum physics or even watched the series, “Quantum Leap,” you know the principle behind Schrodinger’s Cat.

For those non followers of the captain of Enterprise before he was Captain Jonathan Archer, the theory works as follows: The scientist puts a live cat in an enclosed chamber with a compressed bottle of poisonous gas. The gas is released into the chamber. At some point, the cat inhales the substance and ceases to be alive. But until one opens the box, one cannot know if the cat still lives or has ceased to be. In the interest of full disclosure, this summation comes via the internet and it's many wise references, I am not taking physics on the side in my spare time.

Schrodinger meant it as a mental illustration of more complex issues that are beyond my wee brain. Some yahoos who didn’t get this as a theoretical exercise, created the Many Worlds interpretation, and gave rise to multiple bad cross issue storylines in comic books and television shows in the late 80’s.

In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does not single out observation as a special process, both alive and dead states of the cat persist, but are "decoherent" from each other. When the box is opened, that part of the universe containing the observer and cat is split into two separate universes; one containing an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, one containing an observer looking at a box with a live cat.

In other words, in one universe, I am looking at a winning ticket for the lottery. In another universe, I’m looking at a worthless scrap of paper that entitled the state of Maryland to two extra bucks of my money. I have trouble with this theory if only because I wonder what determines a decoherent universe creation. The flap of a butterfly’s wing? Chosing Diet Coke over Diet Pepsi? The consequences of not just a decision but every action and even inaction take on cosmic significance. Inhale, a universe now exists. Exhale, oh look, another.

The range of alteration I presume depends upon the origin of that other world’s existence. For example, in some universe other than this one, decoherent is a word that means something other than how I am before my first diet coke in the morning, because someone created a “Don’t Tase Me Bro Leave Brittany Alone!” moment for Youtube that made it “The Word for 2008.” I imagine in that other universe, I fulfilled the resolutions I made last year, rendering this year’s resolutions superfluous.

Living in that wonderverse, where Wikipedia is accurate, baseball players never used steroids and campaign commercials are banned until after the 4th of July the year of the election, I’m a discovered highly financially and professionally revered author. SUV’s emit gases that smell faintly of chocolate chip cookies, eliminates unwanted cellulite and provides additional conditioning for dry or dyed fine hair. All toddlers in my home are toilet trained and I’ve mastered Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, including the hard middle part that has kept me trying to learn the piece since I got the piano back in 2003. I’ve also lost twenty pounds via diet and exercise.

So this year, my resolution is to find a way to live in the universe where the Schrodinger cat still lives, and hope this week’s winning lottery numbers are 3, 7, 8, 11, 23, and 25.

Happy New Year!