Of Crop Circles and Lawns

You may recall that we have a new dog here in Yacavone Land. His name is Recon, and he’s a Bull Terrier/Border Collie mix. I know almost nothing about dog breeds. I seem to recall that Border Collies herd sheep, presumably on the border of something, and I believe that Bull Terriers have a reputation for fighting bulls, eating young children and maiming adults.

So far Recon has a great disposition. If he’s got any fault it’s that he likes people too much. Still, with his breeding, I have to wonder whether he might revert to form some day by herding a group of people into a circle and laying waste to them. I’m not sure what made me think about that. Maybe it’s a function of growing older that I have to have something to worry about.

In any event, we’re into early spring here. The spring flowers and shrubs have sprung, the trees are starting to get buds, and the grass is starting to green up. That’s not to say it’s been an easy spring. There has been a pattern of a few warm days followed by a cold snap. It’s driving gardeners nuts.

They even have names around here for the cold snaps. There’s blackberry winter for a cold snap that occurs when blackberries bloom and dogwood winter for one that happens when the dogwoods bloom. We’ve been through those already. In fact, we’re running out of blooming berries to identify the cold snaps. My vote for the next ones are dingleberry winter, crunchberry winter (named after Captain Crunch cereal) and Beriberi winter (named after the disease).

Because the grass is starting to turn green and grow, I couldn’t help but notice that our front lawn—and I’m using the word “lawn” very generously—has developed small crop circles about the size of a saucer. I was pretty excited about it because I thought it meant I was being visited by tiny aliens. Then Meredith explained to me that the circles of brown grass are probably where Recon has peed. Boy, was I disappointed. Tiny aliens are much more interesting that urinating dogs in my book.

It never occurred to me that dog piss has herbicidal qualities. What the hell is that dog peeing? Agent Orange? Muriatic Acid? I now know why people take dogs for walks. It’s so they’ll pee on someone else’s grass.

Truthfully, I’m really not that upset having a polka dotted lawn. It’s not like anyone can see our “lawn.” Our nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away, and his lawn is nothing to get excited about. The truth is that there aren’t that many lawns in Fannin County that you would put in Home and Gardens.

And that’s a good thing. It’s one of the great things about living in Appalachia. Half the people around here don’t even have lawns because they live on mountain tops. They have no real soil to speak of, and they are surrounded by trees that block the sunlight. Their yards consist of rocks, moss and scraggly plants. Don’t knock it. You never have to mow, water or fertilize lichen.

There is another percentage of the local population who let their goats run loose in the front yard and think that a dozen rusting cars and old washing machines constitutes yard art. The only thing needed to compete the picture is a blind albino kid on the porch playing the banjo. A nice lawn is not exactly high on their priority list.

Then there are the retirees who, like me, really don’t give a rat’s ass what their front yard looks like as long as they don’t have to care for it. It’s not like the Pope is going to visit me and be critical of my yard maintenance. Hey, at least I don’t have goats crapping all over the yard. Instead, I have a dog that pees Roundup.

What I’m saying is that most people around here don’t live in neat, orderly subdivisions, and lawns do not have the totem status they have in suburbia. And I would guess that’s the way most people like it around here. It’s probably one of the many reasons why people bail out of suburbia to move here. After all, it’s not hard to keep up with the Joneses when the Joneses don’t want to be in the race. It’s also not hard to keep up with the Joneses when you don’t give a damn.

So while you’re admiring your well-groomed, neatly manicured lawn, I’m going to be sitting in a lawn chair in the weeds (and the strange little crop circles) admiring a wonderful view of the mountains. 

A Distressing Garden Discovery

Those of you who follow this blog know that I have a big garden. You also know that I have a problem with garden pests of the four legged variety: moles, rabbits, ground hogs and deer. Of these, I would have to say that deer have been my biggest headache.

Here’s an interesting fact. It is estimated that in 1900 there were only 500,000 white tail deer in the entire U.S. Now the estimates range as high as 30 million. The State of Georgia believes that 1.2 million of them live in Georgia. I’m beginning to think that many of them use my garden as a buffet stopping point when they visit Blue Ridge.

I am convinced that deer were put on earth to be the scourge of rural gardeners. Not only are they numerous, but they tend to operate at times when humans don’t—dusk, dawn and at night. They very wary, have a good sense of smell and acute hearing. They eat almost anything. In the winter they will even eat the bark and tender twigs off fruit trees (which, obviously, is not good for said trees and for friendly relations with the gardener who is trying to grow them). Finally, they have the advantage of being cute which means that most women and many men look at you like you’re Jeffrey Dahmer if you even contemplate killing one. It’s that damn Bambi propaganda. Rural gardeners know them for what they really are: giant, voracious rats.

My second year here I put up a six foot high electric fence with a solar powered charger around my garden to protect it from predatory deer. (Predatory deer. That’s a redundant phrase. If you’re a deer, you’re predatory.)

The fence proved ineffective so this Christmas my oldest son gave me a fence charger which is good for 50 miles of fence wire. Since I only have about a half mile of fence wire around my garden I figured that was more than enough current to keep deer out of my garden. I tested it recently, and it gives off 7,000 volts. That’s enough current to induce sterility in small animals that pass too closely to it. Hell, that’s enough current to cause chromosome damage in adult males. If they installed this fence at the Mexican border it would solve illegal immigration. Foolishly, I believed that once I had that baby installed my deer problems were over.

My son also gave me a trail camera for Christmas. He and I mounted it to one of the garden fence posts facing into the garden. I was so confident I had the deer problem solved with my version of Old Sparky that I had not checked it since it was installed. Well, my son visited me this weekend, and just for the hell of it we pulled the chip out of camera to see what photos it had taken in the last three months. He popped the chip into his computer and began scrolling the through the pictures. The first two were my ugly mug turning the camera on. The third photo, taken six hours after I installed the camera, showed a deer strolling through my garden. Son of a bitch!

The camera revealed that my garden is the deer equivalent of a turnpike rest stop for deer passing through my property. I must have taken 250 photographs of deer in my garden. I have pictures of deer nibbling in the garden while Meredith and I are eating dinner. I have pictures of deer doing the tango. I have pictures of deer treating the trail camera like one of those four-for-a-dollar photo booths at the mall. I have pictures of deer laying in beach chairs under gaudy beach umbrellas sipping pina coladas. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Maybe the beach umbrellas were not that gaudy.

The point is that my high voltage, ultimate defense line, fry ‘em on the wire fence deterred exactly zero deer from getting in my garden. Needless to say this did not make me a happy camper. But I am not deterred. I refuse to be defeated by a four legged, rat-faced creature that is miles behind me on the evolutionary tree. I will deer-proof my garden come hell or high water.

So I did a little internet research. It turns out that a six foot fence is nothing for a deer. They can easily clear an eight foot fence and have been known on occasion to clear a ten foot fence. It is clear that I am going to have to build a 10 foot high fence around my garden. It may not keep out 100 percent of the deer but I can make sure it will take a deer Jesse Owens to get in. Unfortunately I cannot promise to make Mexico (or the deer for that matter) pay for it.

I am bound and determined to make my garden harder to get into than Area 51. When I’m finished it will feel like I’m gardening in a supermax prison.

The depressing thought is that once I get a handle on the deer problem I just know that some other critter or creature is going to rise up to attack my garden and torment me. Whoever said that gardening was a peaceful and tranquil hobby obviously never gardened in North Georgia.

Storytellers, Exotic Dancers and Spring Break

As I told you in my last post, I am taking a freshman-level political science class at the Blue Ridge campus of the University of North Georgia. The “campus” is actually a large rented office space with a couple of nice classrooms but UNG hopes to expand in the future. It’s the only state college within reasonable driving distance.

UNG offered six freshman- and sophomore-level courses in Blue Ridge this spring semester: Algebra, Psychology, Public Speaking, English and two political science courses, American Government and Global Issues. Most of these courses hold no interest to me. There’s no way I’m taking an algebra course. I figure I got this far in life knowing what little math I do know. Besides, I crashed and burned on algebra in high school when I couldn’t imagine imaginary numbers. As for psychology, I’m afraid I’ll discover that I have a committable mental condition. I’m pretty sure I don’t need a freshman-level English composition course. As a trial lawyer I feel I already have some proficiency at public speaking. Furthermore, I have no problem at all blurting out whatever is on my mind in public.

I wanted to take the global issues course since it deals with international relations but it conflicted with some other things on my schedule so that left the freshman level American Government course. I’m now halfway through it. In fact, I just finished my midterm (crushed it!), and I am on spring break. I was thinking of going to Panama City over the break with a load of beer to party hard with a bunch of drunken, hot, sweaty, bikini-clad college women but wisely decided not to. I can get the beer. It’s the other part of the equation I’m lacking. I’m also afraid that if I laid on a beach in a bathing suit I’d be mistaken for a washed up beluga whale and be the subject of a National Geographic aquatic rescue special.

My hope is that UNG will start offering courses in subjects like history, archeology, anthropology and some of the earth sciences like geology and meteorology at Blue Ridge. So when I heard that the director of UNG’s Appalachian Studies program was going to be at the Blue Ridge campus to talk about the program I eagerly attended in hopes I could convince her to offer one of the Appalachian history courses here. I have been interested in Appalachia and its history ever since I did a lot of hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I believe that others in the area would be interested in learning about Appalachian history.

But after hearing her it I’m afraid that parts of the Appalachian studies program are a little too artsy-fartsy for my taste. One of the courses in the program is entitled “Appalachian Storytelling and Traditional Literature,” and if I understood the director correctly, she has a degree is in storytelling, Until that moment, I did not know you could take a course in storytelling much less get a degree in it. Maybe the old joke about getting a college degree in basket weaving is not so much of a joke.

Look, I appreciate a good storyteller as much as the next guy which is probably not saying a lot. I’m pretty sure of you took a poll of guys they would tell you that listening to a storyteller is not on their list of favorite things to do. If they tell you otherwise the odds are that they’re trying to impress a woman majoring in one of the arts, or they are a little light in the jeans. How many times have you seen a bunch of men sitting around drinking beer, eating chicken wings and listening to folk tales? Being entertained by bards and minstrels went out with Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

But regardless of whether you like to listen to storytellers or not, I have a problem with storytelling being a college course much less a field of academic study. It’s no wonder that so many of our college graduates cannot find a job if they have degrees in fields like storytelling. I doubt there is much demand for the degree in the job market. I’ll bet that companies like IBM, Walmart and General Electric don’t have a pressing demand for storytellers. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any significant job in the American economy where a degree in storytelling would be an asset.

Storytelling is not even listed on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupation Outlook website as an occupation. That that tells you something considering that it lists adobe layers, bassoonists, bean roasters, beer coil cleaners, bird trappers, cheese weighers, goat herders, go-go dancers, net repairers, tenors, vaudeville actors, wind tunnel technicians, zookeepers and exotic dancers as occupations. Of these occupations, exotic dancing is the only one that I know far too much about.

The absence of any need for storytellers in real life probably explains why the director of the program works for a university.

Naturally, I got to wondering what a want ad for a storyteller would look like. Here’s what I came up with:

Storyteller wanted. Must have three years’ experience telling stories, tall tales, fairy tales and assorted invented narratives. Must have your own stories; stories will not be provided. Required that you own a clown suit with floppy feet and a big red nose and be good around children. Balloon animal tying skills desired.

Now, a lot of people I know—me included—probably could get a degree in bullshitting but I think that’s a different thing than storytelling…or maybe not.

Fortunately for me, the Appalachian Studies program offers three legitimate courses in Appalachian history which look interesting but I got the impression it is run by a dick professor who doesn’t like old guys auditing his course. He’s probably afraid that we might know more than him. I don’t know that for a fact but it makes me feel good to lash out blindly every now and then. It probably doesn’t matter since I doubt they will offer the courses in Blue Ridge anyway. Professor Dick is probably too self-impressed to drive up from Dahlonega to teach here in Blue Ridge anyway. (Damn! I did it again.)

If there’s a point to this post, it’s this: If you’re are planning on moving to the country when you retire and have thought about taking some college courses just for the heck of it, you better check out the educational opportunities where you’re going. There are not a lot of college choices in most rural areas, and you may be disappointed.

My Second College Career Career.

My new college career is going well at the Blue Ridge branch campus of the University of North Georgia (UNG), home of the most fearsome of college mascots: Nigel the Nighthawk. I hate to say this but as college mascots go, Nigel is pretty lame. You can start with the name “Nigel.” It sounds like it belongs to a slightly effeminate, upper crust Englishman with a lisp and a Sherlock Holmes hat. Not exactly the type of mascot to strike fear in manly or even womanly hearts.

According to Wikipedia, nighthawks are medium-sized, plain-looking, nocturnal birds with long wings, short legs and very short bills who usually feed on insects and nest on the ground. They belong to the family of birds known as nightjars. Nightjars are sometimes referred to as goatsuckers. Other teams have rams, tigers, lions, alligators and wildcats as mascots. UNG has an insect-eating bird often known as a goatsucker. I wonder whether anyone consulted the biology department before deciding that a nighthawk would be a good mascot.

As for the mascot itself, it is primarily blue with gold trim (the school colors) with a large head and flappy-looking wings hanging from its arms. If anything it reminds me of failed comic book superhero. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a … just what the hell is that? The more I think about it, the more I think that Nigel the Nighthawk is Foghorn Leghorn in drag.

Happily, Nigel is not the worst college mascot of all time. There are far more ridiculous ones. Check out this web page. 

George Mason College’s mascot is called Gunston, and it looks like a green Oscar the Grouch wearing a pirate hat. The University of Calfornia at Santa Cruz has Sammy the Banana Slug as a mascot. Concordia College has a corn cob called Cobber while Delta State has Mr. Okra. What’s next—Terry the fighting Turnip, Andy the angry Acorn Squash and Peter the pugnacious Parsnip?

The mascot of the University of the North Carolina School of Arts is a pickle with no name. It is simply called the Fighting Pickle. Its colors are Bahama blue, séance and apple green. I can take a stab at Bahama blue and apple green but I couldn’t identify séance if you water boarded me. I suppose having a fighting pickle as a mascot is okay for a school of arts. It’s probably not much of a surprise that the UNC School of Arts has no NCAA sanctioned sports teams. I think they are hoping that interpretive dance and caricature sketching become popular with the sporting crowd someday.

At least those mascots have cuteness going for them. They are not likely to give little kids nightmares and psychologically scar them for life. The same cannot be said for the mascot of Providence College. It is a friar, i.e, a monk. The mascot wears white robes with a monk’s hood, and its facial expression can only be described as a cross between a rictus grin and a deranged look of agony. It looks more like an Islamic terrorist than a monk. That’s not a good thing for a Catholic school. If I saw Providence’s mascot coming at me through the woods I’d definitely shoot first and ask questions later.

Where was I? Oh, I was telling you about my fledgling second college career at UNG. As I told you in prior posts, I am auditing a freshman level introduction to political science course. Last week the professor had to miss a class so he could interview with his department for a full professorship. Rather than cancel the class he asked me to use the time to speak to the students about my experiences as an attorney defending civil rights cases. Of course I said yes. I never miss a chance to talk about me.

I’d like to tell you that the class went well but I don’t know if it did or not. All the students except me and another old guy are either true freshman or AP students who are still seniors in high school. I have shirts older than them. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the only things I have in common with a 17 year old is the we’re both part of the human race and live in North Georgia. Maybe it’s not that bad but the difference between their life experiences and perspectives and mine is an almost unbridgeable gulf.

It’s obvious they were not as impressed with me as I am but then that might be impossible. I think it’s fair to say that they were not really interested in hearing about civil rights cases that involved basic Constitutional protections in action. I got a little rise out of them when I talked about police K-9 cases. I guess that proves it’s always good to throw an animal act into your show.

I wasn’t offended. My attitude is the hell with them. If they can’t recognize the good stuff when they hear it that’s their problem. As for me, I’ve sucked up to the professor and scored big bonus points which just goes to show you you should always watch out for old dogs with old tricks.

A Rock Wall and a Dog

My boys and I started building a stone wall in front of our cabin years ago. Every summer when we came to the cabin on vacation we would gather rocks from around the property and add them to the wall. Over the years the stone wall grew to the point where it is quite a respectable stone wall as stone walls go.

After I moved here, I spent a lot of time that first fall and winter hunting rocks and adding to the stone wall. Almost daily in all sorts of weather I would leave the cabin and slowly wander through my fields and woods hunting for rocks. Some days the temperature was in the teens, and I was so bundled up that it was an effort to bend over when I found a rock.

I would place the rocks I found in small piles, and when I had enough piles scattered over the property I’d drive around in my tractor, load the rocks in the tractor bucket and dump them near the wall. Every few days I would use the rocks I had gathered to add another few feet to the wall.

After spending so much of my adult life in offices, deposition rooms and courtrooms wearing a suit, it was a genuine pleasure to put on an old pair of jeans (and about 35 other articles of clothing on the really cold days) and work outside. It was satisfying to see the wall slowly grow. In retrospect I realize that the rock hunting and stone wall building I did that first fall and winter was therapeutic. It occupied me while I was making the transition from work to retirement, and helped me shed the accumulate stress and pressure of 37 years working as a trial attorney.

I found it calming and relaxing to hunt rocks and building the stone wall. I had time to ponder and meditate on things while performing simple, non-demanding tasks—tasks which, over time, resulted in the creation of a sturdy rock wall that has become part of the landscape and represents some degree of permanency in a hectic and transitory world.

A few weeks ago I decided to extend the stone wall and that means I’m in the rock hunting and stone wall building business again. This time I have a companion—our new dog, Recon. As far as the vet can tell, Recon is a bull terrier and border collie mix. He is still young and untrained but he’s a great farm dog because he likes to be outside. What could be more relaxing and bucolic than ambling leisurely through the fields and woods hunting rocks with your trusty farm dog at your side? The stresses of the day slowly melt away to be replaced a calm acceptance of life and the eternal rhythm of the seasons. Inner peace pervades you, and you become one with the world.

So it was the other day—me, the dog, woods and fields, hunting rocks, inner harmony—the whole package of rural peace and tranquility. And then the Fed Ex truck came with a delivery to the cabin. You see, Recon has taken to running after vehicles as they leave our property. We’re working to break him of this habit but he is still young and strong willed.

Sure enough, as the Fed Ex truck drove away up the long gravel road that leads to our property Recon came streaking from the woods like a bat out of hell and ran after it. I called to him to come but I might as well have been talking to my stone wall.

This pissed me off because I’m getting tired of walking up that damn hill looking for the dog. I found myself—red-faced, spittle flying, veins bulging in my forehead—standing at the foot of the road shouting obscenities at the top of my lungs to the dog (who by now is 100 yards away and receding fast). So much for inner peace, harmony and tranquility. Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde. Bruce Banner, meet the Incredible Hulk. Mr. Jim, meet Mr. Stroke.

There’s no moral to this story. But the episode did cause me to wonder: do Zen masters ever lose it now and then? Do swami masters of meditation pop a cork occasionally when things don’t go their way? I bet the Dali Llama can be a real asshole at times. For some reason I am comforted by these thoughts.

Making Pancakes

One of the traditions of small town America is the pancake supper. The idea is simple: advertise a day and a time, make a lot of pancakes and sausage and charge everyone five bucks for all the pancakes and sausage they can eat. It’s an easy fundraiser for churches and civic groups. Whoever thought of it was brilliant.

The church I go to always holds a pancake supper on Shrove Tuesday. As it was explained to me, Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of Lent. You’re supposed to fast during Lent. I guess it’s a Christian version of Ramadan or maybe vice versa. Anyway, the idea is that you pig out on Shrove Tuesday before you start to fast on Ash Wednesday. That’s why Shrove Tuesday is also called Fat Tuesday. It’s also called Pancake Tuesday in some countries because pancakes are traditional Shrove Tuesday fare. Apparently that’s because pancakes are rich in milk, butter and eggs. Hey, I didn’t make this up—I read it on the internet. My assumption is that the pancake custom dates back to an earlier, less affluent time. Maybe even a time before cows were invented. I’ve never considered eating pancakes to be high living. If it were me, I’d make it Steak and Key Lime Pie Tuesday.

The whole subject of Shrove Tuesday pancake dinners is all very complicated actually. I think you have to have a degree in theology to really understand it.

This Shrove Tuesday thing is simpler, easier to understand and a lot more fun in places like New Orleans where they celebrate Shrove Tuesday with parades, booze, beads, bacchanalia, and women baring various parts of their anatomy. Personally, I like that idea better than eating pancakes and sausage but this is the Bible Belt so pancakes it is. (Not to mention the fact that Lent falls in February which is a very cold season in this neck of the woods so the idea of baring any sensitive area of the body is not very practical.)

In my church it’s the men’s group that puts on the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper. It is an opportunity for men who do not know what they are doing to make a mess in the church kitchen.

This year for some reason I was designated as one of the three pancake makers. I’m still trying to decide whether this was an honor or not. I’m not sure why I was picked to make pancakes. I have no pancake-making experience, and there’s nothing on my resume to suggest I would be good at making pancakes. Maybe they thought I handled a case once involving pancakes.

At any rate, I showed up at the appointed time and proceeded to make pancakes. Making pancakes is not that tough—you get the hang of it pretty quickly. The object is to make nice round pancakes. I have to admit that my first three pancakes fell far short of the objective. They resembled a Rorschach ink blot, a pregnant guppy and the outline of the nation of Botswana. But I got better. Which is good because I couldn’t have handled the shame of being demoted to the syrup line. If you’re on the syrup line your job is to make sure the syrup pourers on all the tables are full. It’s a very sticky job.

One of the guys started making Micky Mouse pancakes for the kids. That’s a round pancake with two smaller circles for Mickey’s ears. Not to be outdone I proposed making Minnie Mouse pancakes with two small circles for ears and two small circles for boobs but I was overruled by higher church authority on moral grounds.

I learned that there is yeast in pancake mix. The longer it sits after being mixed the more it rises when you put it on the griddle. There was a long pause after the first initial rush of pancake eaters and so the pancake mix sat for a while. That led to some interesting pancakes. When we started making pancakes again, the small pancakes looked like hockey pucks, and the larger ones came out discus-shaped.

Unfortunately, the church’s pancake supper coincided with an ice storm. It was going well until around 7:30 in the evening. That’s when it was announced that the roads were turning icy. Icy roads are bad news around here, and the room cleared as if someone had announced that an anthrax bomb had gone off in downtown Blue Ridge.

That was okay with me because I was starting to get tired of making pancakes and watching people eat pancakes. Plus the smell of 30 pounds of cooked pork sausage was beginning to nauseate me.

So now I can say that I have participated in the great American tradition of the pancake supper. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Assembling A Deer

Weird things seem to keep happening at my happy country home. Last spring I found the severed foreleg of a deer in my garden. Not too long ago I discovered a dead possum with puncture wounds in its throat in my side yard. Shortly after that I found a dead young deer with similar puncture wounds in its neck hanging from my fence line.

I consider these events to be weird or at the very least unusual but then I’ve never lived in rural Southern Appalachia before. Maybe this type of stuff happens all the time here.

Now I have another mystery on my hands—the mystery of the two skulls.

Let me set the scene. When I found the young deer hanging from the fence about two months ago I had to dispose of the body. My son and I cut off its head and threw the body into a wood line away from the cabin. We placed the head on a red ant hill under a stout plastic barrel. The idea was to let the red ants pick the skull clean so I could hang it on a wall in the workshop. It seemed like a suitably country thing to do. What man doesn’t want the skulls of dead animals decorating his man cave?

Mindful that there are animals around here who would like nothing better than to have a deer skull as a play toy I placed six cinder blocks on top of the barrel to prevent animals from getting to the skull. I felt comfortable that the skull was protected. So I was a little surprised a few days ago when Meredith told me that there was a deer skull in our yard.

Sure enough, there was a clean, bleached skull sitting on the grass. I could see the barrel out in the field, and it still had the cinder blocks on top of it so I knew it had not been tipped over. I figured some animal had burrowed under the barrel, gotten the young deer’s skull and left it in our yard.

I didn’t think anything more about it until a couple of days later when I was walking our new dog in the field near the plastic barrel. I noticed there were no signs that anything had burrowed under the barrel so I took the cinder blocks off and looked underneath it. To my surprise the deer head I had placed there was still there. If you’re following the story so far that means I now have two deer skulls on my property.

The other thing I noticed was that skull under the barrel was significantly smaller than the deer skull in my yard, and I concluded that the new skull came from an adult deer.

A day or two later I saw our dog chewing on a large bone in the yard. I assumed it was one of the many chew bones we give him. He has a habit of taking them out of the house to chew. The yard is littered with them. But when I investigated I discovered he was chewing on one of the long bones that make up a deer’s leg. What's more, he had gathered a couple of other long bones from a deer. Given the size of the bones it is clear that they came from an adult deer and not the juvenile deer I found hanging on the fence.

I suppose it’s not surprising that there are two dead deer carcasses in the vicinity of my property. There are a lot of deer around here, and deer hunting is a favorite sport in these parts. Come hunting season, it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry is crawling through the woods with a rifle or a bow trying to bag a deer. It has occurred to me that a good way for a guy around here to commit suicide in a way that his wife can still collect on the life insurance policy is to strap a couple of antlers to his head and walk noisily through the woods during hunting season.

But one thought keeps nagging me. I was under the impression that most hunters do not butcher a fallen deer in the field. I think the usual practice is to gut the deer and haul the body, skull and all, somewhere to butcher it. If that’s true then you’re not going to find a lot of deer skeletons in the woods. Moreover, I’ve told this story to a number of people who have lived here for some time, and they think it is unusual for deer parts to keep showing up in my yard. Obviously, it is not a commonplace occurrence.

I suppose it’s possible there is a real Daniel Boone-type in the neighborhood who knows how to butcher a deer and disposes the carcasses in the woods. That might explain why there are deer bones in the vicinity.

Of course, there are many other possible explanations. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that a deer died of natural causes about the same time another deer got hung up on my fence. Maybe I live in the Appalachian equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle for deer. Maybe my dog that is part paleontologist, and he is trying to gather enough deer bones to construct a complete skeleton.

The bottom line is that I’m not sure what to think about the mystery of the two skulls. All I know is that I have enough chewed dog bones, deer bones and skulls littering the yard around my cabin that it’s beginning to resemble a Neolithic hunter-gatherer’s camp site. When I moved to the cabin I was seeking a simpler life but I was not intending it to be Stone Age.

I guess this is just another example of how life in the country is so different from life in the suburbs.