Man and beast

Since we seem to have a thread going in the comments on this post about wildlife, specifically moose and wild turkeys, I've got a few other stories about close encounters with wildlife, or bits of their carcass, anyway.

When I was a kid, I had a friend whose father went every year to Alaska, to hunt. Hunting is almost a religion in Michigan, by the way. One time he bagged a moose and gave at least one hunk of moose meat to our household.

My mother, back then a strong anti-gun person (she now frequently brings up going to NH and buying one, with which she intends to fend off my dad, from whom she is separated - that's another story, better left to my memoir), took the moose steak and proceeded to prepare it in various ways. As in, she made in inedible by frying it, boiling it and then trying to make a fricassee out of it.

My mother, by the way, is a really good cook.

"I just keep thinking of that moose, looking at me with its moose eyes," she said as my dad took the meat out the compost heap.

It only just occurred to me how painful the waste of meat must have been to my dad.

Jumping to the present day ... Just a couple of weeks ago, one of my neighbors came to my door and asked me if I wanted any deer meat.

I declined; I had enough tough, dry venison at my aunt's house to make me ill. I told him that and he said, "Oh, no, this is tender. It's a young deer," indicating with his hands how little it was.

"You killed a deer that young?" I asked, incredulous.

"No, it was hit by a car, on the road by the airport." (The PI Airfield)

"(Name of person), even if I did like venison, I do not eat roadkill," I replied in what I hoped was a tone with just the right amount of revulsion mixed in to make him go away.

I won't go into his description, blurted out in the confusion of his Gillian-love (he's, like 85, years old), of how he found the deer still alive, but with a broken leg, by the side of the road and dragged it into the bushes ... ooops, going into the description.

Well, to cap off this attempt to win my heart by offering me free meat, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them up for me to see. Covered in dried blood, they were.

He and another neighbor had just finished 'processing' the deer.

"Yuck," I said. I believed that I had injected enough revulsion in that one word to make anyone run home and wash their hands. And, you know, not visit me for a week or so.

Except him, of course. He then actually reached out and ran one blood-covered hand down the back of my head.

Come to Plum Island, rich people. The old-timers welcome you with outstretched (and blood-covered) hands.