Why, Oh Why, Can't I?

The last thing my husband said as he left for work this morning was "This is a house of basket cases."

Just then, the phone rang.

It was my friend, calling to say she'd been watching a pair of Eastern Bluebirds on her fly-through feeder, a first for her Life List. She'd never actually seen a bluebird in town before, though she'd seen them further south.

Suddenly, the day took a turn. For the better, for once. I raised my coffee cup (the one which reads "Father Time can really kick the shit out of you") and toasted one of my favorite pastimes (not that one, buttonhead, I'm talking birdwatching, here). I was thinking about when cardinals first began to appear Up North, far beyond their traditional range. We'd recently moved here from The City, Global Warming snapping at our heels.

Now cardinals are everywhere. Not to mention bluebirds, yuppies (are there still such things?) and Real Summers (snow gone by mid-May, as opposed to July).

Not that this is good news. But, these days, in the thick of this rationalized massacre they call Hunting Season, one grasps at any feel-good straw. (Hey...did you hear about the hunter who fell out of his bunk in Pennsylvania and impaled himself on a chair? True story. He died. I rest my case.)

So the Great Gray Owls are coming down from Canada and I finally get a decent tan. Not simultaneously. The tan occurred this past summer, the owls have been making an appearance for several winters now. Their food supply dwindles, they head south. So far, the Border Patrol doesn't suspect anything. The owls stake out the roadside ditches, scouting for mice and voles. On one of my daily runs last January, I counted nine Great Grays in the trees along the Shore, with those gold-coin eyes and Linda Blair head movements.

I could watch birds for hours, for days, for life. As thrilling as the rare sighting is...northern waterthrush, crossbill, osprey, Odd Duck...I'm just as happy hanging with the Usual Suspects. Chickadees, nuthatches, siskins, juncos, cardinals, and now, apparently, coming-soon-to-a-birdfeeder-near-you, bluebirds.

When I asked my bluebird-sighting friend what she thought the pair was doing on her feeder, she answered "Migrating," then launched into the song lyric cited above. Which I promptly copped for a title. Give credit where credit is due, is my motto, except at a Garage Sale.

I love to watch animals in the wild, too, only they tend not to stick around, smart as most of them are about the human species. I'm pretty smart about the human species myself. It's only a matter of time (i.e., until my daughter fledges), and I'm outta here. Toast. Toast Headed Straight for The Borderland...The Cabin...The Woods...Oh My! To be among my own kind.

In preparation for this great migration, I'll be holding The Garage Sale To End All Garage Sales. I may have to rent a hall. Make that a roller rink (are there still such things?). It'll take some time to sort through everything, the flotsam of several lifetimes. In fact, I should probably get started, the sooner the better. Because in the end, I'll be traveling light. Bringing only the important stuff...books, blankets, beer, binoculars, birdseed. And don't forget baskets, one for each of us.

Letter from God's Country

Einstein died and went to Heaven.

"Albert, welcome!" said St. Peter. "I'm so pleased you're here! I know you're a gregarious man, not to mention a genius, so I'm going to make you Official Greeter at the Pearly Gates."

In preparing for his new position, Einstein decided he would ask each newcomer his or her IQ. That way he would know on what level he could talk to them.

The first person through the Gates said she had an IQ of 180. Einstein sat down with her and had a lengthy discussion about astrophysics.

The next person said he had an IQ of 120. He and Einstein talked baseball for half the morning.

The next person said his IQ was about 70. Einstein thought for a moment, then he asked, "Did you get your deer?"

This is the time of year I most sorely miss living in the Old Neighborhood down in The City. I will always miss The City for any number of reasons. For good or otherwise, The City is a large part of who I am. But in November, I miss it most. This time of year, I yearn to be in the midst of intelligent, civilized people. To be able to drive across town to meet an intelligent, civilized person for cocktails and not be subjected to graphic scenes of death en route. And once there, to be in a roomful of intelligent, civilized people, not one of whom is wearing a blaze orange clothing item. Why would they be? They're intelligent and civilized.

Instead, for lo this past decade-and-a-half, I find myself this time of year trapped in a particularly sinister corridor of Hell on Earth known as Firearms Deer Season. Up North, in God's Country, one cannot escape the reality of this bloodbath. It's in your face on a daily basis, baby. These are Good Ole Boys up here, the northern version of the quintessential American Redneck. Their motto: Not Until You Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers. And no, they're not talking about their dicks (although they could be). They're talking about their guns, baby, and they're not going to let you forget it. Not for a minute. Not for one bloody nanosecond.

For two weeks in November, every other male in the northern half of the state...even the occasional reasonably intelligent one...does a dramatic backslide on the evolutionary scale and heads for the woods, to get it up slaughtering animals. I wonder, just when does the moment of lift off occur? When the deer is first spotted? When the gun is raised? When the trigger is pulled? When the unfortunate creature convulses in agony, and hopefully, mercifully, dies?

Raise your hand if the thought has crossed your mind that hunting has inherent in it a component of misogyny.

There. I said it. So shoot me.

It goes without saying (when did that ever stop me?) that these neanderthals wear blaze orange because they're so mentally-challenged they'd shoot each other if they didn't. It also goes without saying that a good percentage of them are drunk. Not that I have anything against the drunken state per se, except when it enables the drunk-ee to engage in violent behavior...beat the wife, kick the dog, blow the ass off the next living thing unlucky enough to materialize in "My Personal Space," a.k.a. the crosshairs of a long-range spotting scope.

And don't you love this word: Harvest. As in, The Deer Harvest. As if they're so many stalks of corn poking up between the pines. When's the last time you saw corn bleed? Heard it scream? Saw pure terror in its eyes?

And then there's this: Thinning the Herd. As in, There are too many deer, we have to Thin the Herd. I put it to you that there's another approach to this overpopulation dilemma. There are too many hunters, baby, let's thin that herd.

Better yet, let's even the playing field. Hunters, after all, consider themselves sportsmen. Here's how it works: one team gets all the equipment (rifles, ammunition, binoculars, ATVs), and the other team gets...to run like hell! Hows about we reshuffle this scenario, make it FAIR (now there's a unique concept, boys). Hows about we round up all the hunters and send them out into the woods and let them FUCKING HUNT EACH OTHER!! They get their rocks off, the herd gets thinned, everybody wins. Now there's a solution I can live with. Not to mention countless innocent animals.

My husband says I have a tendency to fly off the handle about this. Ya think?

Not that he and I aren't on the same page about The Hunting Thing. Our perspectives differ. Whereas I prefer the page heading "Sadistic Buttonheads" (the latter being one of my late father's favorite epithets), my husband prefers "Lack of Education," meaning he gives many of these AAAs the benefit of the doubt because they're ignorant regarding the moral issues surrounding their "tradition." In other words, nobody ever taught them otherwise. Hmmm...one has to be taught that all sentient beings feel pain? That it's not okay to blow another living creature away simply for the sake of some misguided male bonding need? "Yo, Mikey! We gotta bond, dude! What say we head out north of town and shoot something!" What this says about the state of the male psyche is not encouraging.

It's my husband's way of coping, to plead ignorance on behalf of these "uneducated" generics. A sort of "Sixth Sense" approach: I see idiots everywhere, only they don't know they're idiots. My way of coping is to seek the solace of any of my plethora of addictions and howl at the moon. Or keep the window of the Jeep rolled down so I can flip off all the vehicles with dead deer attached. Besides, I don't trust mankind's capacity to Do The Right Thing in any given situation (emphasis on man). Any species that would vote to allow the issuing of hunting licenses to eight-year-olds exhibits questionable decision-making skills. Ya think?

And don't you just know that a majority of these throwbacks consider themselves religious? And can't you just hear their prayers? "Oh Lord, I thank Thee for Thy bountiful goodness, and bless my family and friends, and protect all Thy precious sacred zygotes, and help me teach my children compassion, and please, please, Lord, put an eight-point buck in my sights, that I may blow it to Kingdom Come, Lord, and I'll remain Thy ever faithful servant, Amen." What would Jesus do? Don a blaze orange robe? Exchange his staff for a Remington thirty-aught-six? Somebody may have to rewrite the 23rd Psalm: "Thy rod and thy high-powered rifle they comfort me."

As for me, I'm the ultimate redneck fodder. A yellow dog tree-hugger. Your basic bleeding-heart agnostic with leanings toward The East. Especially in November, when I'm pushed until I'm practically horizontal. Desperation and Despair: the usual ingredients for Finding Religion. If ever there were cause for me to ponder questions of The Afterlife, it's during these two weeks each year. Call me an Armchair Buddhist, add that to the list, but the Buddhists teach that all life...ALL LIFE...is sacred. And if, as they would also have us believe, there is such thing as Karma, as Reincarnation, that possibility alone goes a long way toward assuaging my angst. To paraphrase: what goes around, comes around. This time you're the hunter, next time, the hunted. You don't want to come back as steak? Don't eat cows, buttonhead.

At our house we believe that old standby, The Golden Rule, is pretty much all the religious instruction one could ever need. Although she's never set foot inside a Sunday School, our daughter is developing a moral sense. She's a vegetarian, an animal lover, an environmentalist, a believer in the "catch and release" approach to unwanted household pests (we hope to make use of this method when she begins dating). She's also a gymnast.

Last Sunday afternoon, we were driving home from a gym meet along a remote two-lane highway. A stunningly beautiful day in late fall, not a cloud in the sky, fields and forests lazing toward the horizon. God's Country. Only, I was soon reminded, I'd forgotten something. This was Opening Day of Deer Season. Sunday at noon, to be exact, just in time to make church before heading out to the kill. As I drove, I tried to avert my gaze from the dozens upon dozens of oncoming vehicles piled high with the bloodied bodies of dead deer...on roofs, on fenders, in truck beds, on trailers. Vehicle after vehicle with its grotesque load, its shadowy flashes of orange glimpsed through the windshield. I was driving through a war zone. The juxtaposition of the beautiful day, and the horror of all that carnage, was almost more than I could bear. I felt traumatized. Victimized. Dirty.

And I felt incredibly, incredibly angry.

Somehow, I kept it together. I was a mother, with a child beside me, thankfully asleep. But...what if she should wake up? Look out the window? How could I possibly explain something so appallingly immoral to a child struggling to put together a moral world? My eyes glazed over and I drove. And tried not to think. And tried not to roll down the window and gesticulate. After all, my daughter was there. But I haven't felt that sickened by anything in as long as I can remember. It was the ultimate no-brainer. A monstrous, distorted, giant-sized "What's Wrong With This Picture?"

AND. IT. WAS. WRONG.

But now what? Where do I go from here? How do I end this screed?

Like this.