The Light in the Forest
The Light in the Forest
Awfully Gone
December 20, 2018
The Christmas Dead
A walk through the woods with the dog on a mild and sunny December afternoon led us to leaves encased, beautifully, below a thin sheet of ice.
There were also many fallen trees, some of them blocking the path, showing their roots to the chilly sky.
There were squirrels and deer which the dog barked at furiously as their white tails bobbed away back into the denser part of the forest. Beer cans littered some spots of the trail and the bridge was full of graffiti including one spray-painted passage which asked: Why Didn’t You Come To My Funeral?
Whoever wrote that wanted us to think of ghosts or sadness. We thought of silly kids with too much time.
One of the deer we saw was dead. Extremely so. The poor thing’s mangled corpse looked like something out of a horror movie, the pained expression of death still registered across its face.
A closer look made us even queasier. The deer’s back half was gone, ribs exposed, and one guess was someone had set the dead carcass on fire.
For a meal? For a twisted thrill?
We thought it was a female but another perspective revealed that this deer had once had antlers, which had been sawed off. Had the animal been hit by a car then desperately crawled into the woods where it died and then someone – maybe another punk with too much time – decided to claim the antlers for a souvenir?
The grotesque spectacle of fresh and perhaps violent and awful death did not ruin our walk. It did make us think how much we wish all people would leave deer and other creatures off their Christmas plate.
Santa, in his flight in a few days, will see far and wide through the cold Christmas Eve night. And the reindeer, though told not to look down, have to sometimes. They have eyes like hawks. And memories like Gods. --TK
Thursday, December 20, 2018