Attack Deer HITS home!

My mother has a history of leaving me funny messages. Sometimes I get up on stage and play them for people and talk about them and we all laugh. It's not laughing at her, it's laughing with her, since my mom is the first to laugh. I know this for a fact because the last time I got up on a stage and played them, she was there, and she laughed a LOT. She also said that she thought the messages were me impersonating her, and that I had "really, gone over the top a bit. Then I realized that it was me. I SOUND LIKE THAT!" All in all, my mom is hilarious and adorable.

So I get a message yesterday.
momchangdeer.mp3

For those who can't listen to that, it basically says that my cat, whom my mother fell madly in love with while cat-sitting, and whom I gave said cat to (even though I was QUITE fond of said cat myself) because she needed a little buddy more then I did, was attacked by a deer. And that there is a rogue deer attacking cats in North Hero. But don't worry, the Chang is quite "nonchalant about the whole affair."

No, seriously.

I called her, obviously. Turns out her neighbor, who has about four cats, had warned my mom that there was a deer that is attacking cats. And that the neighbor thought that maybe the deer had had a "bad experience" with a cat while a fawn.

Pause for a second. A fawn is the size of a small dog. A cat, usually, is not.

So yesterday morning, my mom woke up around 6 AM, cause that's what she does. Chang wished to go outside, because that's what he does. About a half hour later, according to my mother, she heard a noise. Now, I wish to hell I had the ability to tap my own cell phone, so as to record my mother's version of the noise that she heard. She described it as a "braying" like a donkey. And then she brayed. It was quite convincing.

The noise was also loud enough to make the other neighbor's dogs bark. They have a couple Bull Mastifs whose only purpose on earth is to bark at stuff and drool over things. They, too, heard the braying, and felt it warranted the former.

My mother hurried downstairs, and opened the back door to find Chang on the porch, "completely non-plussed" and a deer a few feet away. The deer was the source of the braying, it was facing Chang and didn't seem happy. As my mom opened the door, the deer ran off, continuing to bray.

Apparently, the braying is a deer's "attack noise." Mom's theory is that Chang went into the woods to "do his thing" and encountered the deer, and ran back to the house. I imagine a deer COULD run up three porch steps, but I also imagine said deer would have to be awfully motivated to do so.

After Mom and I stopped laughing, she reminded me of the story of Bonkers the Deer. Bonkers hit North Hero either when I was very little, or before I was born. I don't remember details, it's one of those hazy, very exciting events of childhood. He could have just been something that I heard stories about. At any rate, it was a deer that began attacking people. Groups of people. The community decided that killing Bonkers was wrong, so he was captured (I believe) and shipped via boat off to Savage Island, which is less then a mile off the coast of North Hero. It's a privately owned island, with one house on it and a sheep farm.

Bonkers came back. He SWAM (if memory serves) the distance BACK to North Hero, and crashed a Fourth of July party. Literally. I'll call my Dad tonight to see if my memory is correct, or how the story of Bonkers ended.

The older I get, the more I realized that everything I love has root in my childhood. Apparently, I have a history with deer attacking people, and ergo, my love of animal attack stories. Perhaps we are just a sum of our experiences. Alls I know is that if you live in North Hero, and have a cat, beware for a rogue deer with revenge on the brain. The tiny, tiny brain.