Archive for California

Dear Deer

{ May 16, 2007 @ 1:36 pm } · { Adrenaline, Animal Control, Brother, California, Deer }
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I saved Bambi once.  One of the cooler things I’ve done in my life and one of the most memorable.

I was driving down the long, winding, wooded road to my job at the tennis club.  Coming around a bend I looked up to the top of a hill and noticed a deer standing up by a wrought iron fence that surrounded the yard of one of the neighbourhood’s wealthy occupants.  Nothing unusual there until I noticed the mini deer standing next to it.  The mini deer was just a baby.  Half the height and probably a third of the weight of its mother.  The baby deer’s haunches were wedged between two bars of the fence. 

I watched as a garbage truck (with two burly guys in it) drove by.  I watched again as a large pickup truck drove by.  I knew they had to have seen the deer but neither vehicle stopped.  Hmmph I thought, so much for men. 

My anxiety level was rising.  I am always completely overcome by desperate situations that involve animals.  I stopped my car, not even thinking what I would do, and looked up at the house.  I could see an older couple framed in the picture window with a phone in the hand of the gentleman.  They were looking at the deer.  I knew what that meant.  ANIMAL CONTROL.  I had had many encounters with animal control.  In my experience they would come out and take the animal away and that would be that.  For some reason they are reticent to just let animals go.  Anyways, I couldn’t let that happen.

I approached the deer and realized that deer are much bigger than one would think.  Especially when you are looking up at them.  Mama deer didn’t budge from her spot next to baby.  Baby’s haunches were scraped and bloody from trying desperately to free itself.  It struggled as I approached.  My brother later told me I was lucky that mama deer didn’t rip me a new one but to this day I think she sensed I was there to help. 

I looked at the bars and decided the only thing to do would be to widen them so the baby could slip through.  My heart was pumping like mad which probably accounts for the adrenaline.  I placed my hands on the bars, heard a noise and stopped.  It was the garbage truck coming back.  I suddenly flashed to the horrible sight of me freeing the deer and watching as they ran headlong into the path of the garbage truck.  So I waited.  Moments later I bent the bars apart (still QUITE amazed about that – seemed like nothing at the time, but today I try it on similar bars and they don’t budge), and sure enough the deer shot down the hill and across the road.  They didn’t even look both ways.

I ran back to my car before the owners of the fence could voice their opinions.  But thinking about it afterwards I realized that I could feel only good vibrations emanating from the house – concern.  They didn’t care about the fence (they were rich anyways) and I think I felt their relief as the deer was freed from its prison.  Anyways, everyone around there knew I was the manager of the tennis club so I’m sure I would have heard about it if the people had been upset and I never did.

I like to think about that deer, alive and well, living in California – with maybe a few scars from its brush with a humanity.

Lies My Mum Told Me…

{ May 6, 2007 @ 6:50 pm } · { Brother, California, Canada, Cats, Lillian, Mum, Myself }
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The Family Circa 1969The Family Circa 1969 

 I love my Mum.  She is unique to my eyes, and she’s a very smart cookie.  She had a lot to deal with while my two brothers and I were growing up and I think she did the best she knew how.  Some of her tactics however were quite intriguing as I look back.

For instance, as a child we would go shopping together in the department store in Los Altos, California where I spent the early part of my childhood.  One day we were riding the escalator and she told me not to stick my head over the railing.  I think I did so anyways, so the next time we were there she told me the story about the little girl who got her head cut off riding up the escalator (she didn’t even tell me to not stick my head over the railing again because I might have caught on that she was trying to teach me a lesson).  She said the little girl stuck her head out too far and it got chopped off by the plastic divider between floors.  Well I never forgot that.  I was completely fascinated and asked so many questions every time we rode an escalator from then on that I think she may have wished she had never mentioned it.  It did, however, keep me from sticking my head over the railing.

When we moved to Canada I was still quite young – about 7.  We lived in a small town in the countryside for the first two years.  My Mum liked visiting old graveyards and reading the tombstones.  It was on one of these trips that we passed an old barn and my mother told me the story of the little girl who ran into an old barn to chase down her ball.  She fell through the floor and died.  No doubt this has actually happened on occasion so it wasn’t a complete fabrication.  And once again I was fascinated.  Every time I looked at a barn from then on I would remember that story.

Mum’s coup de gras came when I was in highschool a few years later.  I had the terrible habit of leaving my curling iron plugged in after styling my ever-so-popular Farrah Fawcett hairstyle in the morning.  That was in the days before they had auto shut-offs.  My mother kept telling me to remember to shut off my curling iron, but I kept forgetting.  One day I got a call at the school.  My mother said in her iciest tone that she would be picking up me and my best friend, Lillian, from school that afternoon.  She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but I knew something was up.

She picked us up and drove towards Lillian’s house.  On the way she said there had been a fire.  She said it was from the curling iron and trust me my Mum could win an academy award for her performance.  I didn’t believe her at first but she didn’t cave and when I asked about my cat she said she didn’t make it out.  Well I burst into tears.  Lillian got out at her house and we drove home with me bawling in the back seat.  When we got home I ran upstairs (it was a rather large house so it didn’t surprise me that there was no evidence of fire in the foyer).  There had been no fire.  My cat was sleeping on my bed.  I called Lillian to tell her, and she said my Mum was ‘crazy’ or something to that effect but that she was glad everything was okay. 

You would think I might be a little scarred by that incident and perhaps I was because from then on I became paranoid I had left my curling iron on.  I remember calling from the payphone at school on many occasions to ask her to check.  Even to this day I double-check my hair straightener and stove burners are off before I leave for work.  And, thanks to my brother, I unplug anything that contains a heating element – like my toaster and portable heater.  So I guess you could say it’s a good thing…a few weeks ago a guy’s whole house burned down because he went out and left a battery charger plugged in.  I guess his mother never lied to him…