Now that sounds unsual! Deer are normally very circumspect around people, and while they might come into your yard in search of apples dropped from your apple tree, or a nutritous grass, they aren't likely to come into your house. I decided to read the piece, expecting perhaps one of those stories in which a deer thought killed by a car is placed somewhere like the trunk of a car, only to revive and need to be dispatched later. Perhaps he was planning to clean it in his shower, avoiding the chill of winter while being able to avail himself of the drain and the showerhead for easy cleanup? That would be insightful for a Washington Post guy.
It turns out that, no, the issue is that the editors decided to fudge the preposition to make the piece sound more interesting. What he really meant was that he had killed a deer from his bathroom, i.e., by shooting out the window.
The piece is otherwise kind of interesting. It endorses hunting as a humane means of culling a deer herd that has -- he claims, and I'll just assume without evidence that he is right -- grown to 14 times what can be sustained. It's good citizenship, even good environmentalism and conservationism, for him to buy a rifle and take up hunting. That's a view that I would be happy to encourage, provided that it doesn't encourage the common misconception of the Second Amendment as a sort-of right-to-hunt amendment.
Venison is also very healthy; I eat a lot of it myself. Last night I made a venison cube steak braise in a Chile Colarado sauce; for New Year's Eve, the venison steak pies that I like on that occasion. If he's correct that we have an overabundance of deer, maybe think about going and getting some yourselves.
8 comments:
Unfortunately I'm in a region afflicted with a great deal of chronic wasting disease in deer.
A wag on the student paper in my high school wrote, "Prepositions are not the correct words to end a sentence with."
Though I can't remember WHICH wag it was.
I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I may or may not have had an older relative who had the screens on his house windows rigged so that he could shoot deer out the window without damaging the screens. Or so I was told. (His part of Texas had too many deer, and his wife wanted roses. Further more the deponent sayeth not.)
LittleRed1
Christopher B beat me to it
Hey! You didn't attribute 'I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.' to Groucho. You should be fired.
Fine him? I’ll give him a raise. Next year he’ll get double nothing for his comments.
(Joke attributed to a friend of my father’s, who made it about them as volunteer firefighters.)
Hold on -- blog comments count as academic publications now!? Sweet!! I'll be back in a couple months, after I update my resume.
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