Did you know that deer at the most dangerous animals (to man) in North America? True fact. When my husband suggests that he is practicing home land security by hunting he is telling a big fat lie, but a lie with a solid a basis in fact.
My beloved got his buck on the last day of deer season. He shot it with an arrow and brought the mighty man killer down. I appreciate the skill that it takes to get close enough to a big buck to kill it with an arrow. I understand that in the world of manly man type of things, poking something to death with a sharp stick has been a skill that people have applauded since the first time it happened.
The thing I hate about hunting season is the week in which the dead deer has to hang so that the blood can drip out and the meat does what ever it does when it hangs for a week. (Would that be, 'rot'?) I do not like to look at the face of my next meal--yes, the mighty buck is a man-killer and the man who can bring one down with an arrow is a stud--but I am not down with seeing the dead eyes of twenty meals for my family.
Perhaps this makes me a hypocrite. I eat meat so the logic seems to be that I should be able to look at a hanging carcass and think, "ummm...jerky!"
But is doesn't work that way for me. What I see is a dead animal and I feel sorry for it and then I get nauseated because it's tongue is hanging out of it's mouth and it's rib cage is flared open.
It doesn't bother the rest of my family. The children think it is cool to see what the inside of an animal looks like, they would like to have their picture taken by it, they want to hear the story that begins with, "I snuck up on him..." They are all pissed at me that I wouldn't cook the heart or the liver and they all think that it is hysterical that looking it at gives me the drive heaves.
I would be the only member of this family to have a bad reaction to the big Buck, except for Blue:
Blue looks like a dog that would like to get ahold of a giant piece of dead flesh doesn't he? He looks like the shifty type. At first glance at his half black, half white face you might think he was a prime candidate for the animal carcasses found in yards.
But nope.
Blue is much like me: he eats the meat but he prefers for it to arrive in a nice package. The sight of dead animal causes him to lose his shit. He barks, growls, howls and backs away. He will not approach the dangling dinner. He will not look at it, walk past it or sniff at it. In fact, when he catches sight on the carcass he gets the dry heaves.
Me and Blue, the two hypocrites who like a tasty steak, but don't want to see that steak wearing its face. We are the two people most happy on this day after Christmas--the carcass is now on it's way to the butcher shop and we no longer have to walk past the proof that Martin is the man.
Last years deer was delicious, when I cooked it the meat flew off the plates. I even enjoyed it and said things like, "Umm--this is a good one Martin, I am so glad you went hunting!" It is very possible that the reason I thought that deer tasted so good was that I never had to look at it's face, it showed up at my house just the way I like it; wrapped in white paper.
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