Deer Are Just Mean
The Chicago Tribune today investigates an epidemic of marauding deer Illinois:
Three times on Tuesday, a single white-tailed doe launched unprovoked attacks on passersby, including a campus police officer. She charged her victims repeatedly, reared on her hind legs and slashed them with her sharp front hooves in a maneuver called the "beat down," usually reserved for predators like wolves or coyotes.
"Call me Bambi one more time and I'll cut you bitch!"
SIU wildlife ecologist Clay Nielsen, who on Thursday dispensed safety tips for humans at a campus seminar titled "Avoiding Deer-Human Encounters of the Third Kind," thinks as many as three does may be to blame in attacks this year and last.
The deer are working together to defeat us. This is alarming.
With an estimated 30 million deer in North America, there are hundreds of thousands of deer-human encounters every year. But most involve cars or hunting weapons, and the deer are the ones on the losing end. On rare occasions, frisky bucks have been known to take out their frustrations on a convenient human during the fall rutting season.
And do they call afterwards? No. Do they remember your name when you see them again at Starbucks? No.
If you don't know what "rutting" means, please look it up. Then sit down and ponder what it means to have that word in the same sentence as the phrase "take out their frustrations on a convenient human".
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