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Hands off the little dears!

By Clark Nida

Muntjac deer invasion could cost Scotland £1.9m a year

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-15197277

We’re so keen to put a price on everything. Even if it falls due to be paid in a dubious coinage.

They started culling deer in New Jersey the day I arrived to take up a job I’d been grateful to land. Deer are protected by law, along with many other things, such as the fast-vanishing wetlands. But New Jersey doesn’t seem interested in enforcing the good laws they already have.

The residents of Princeton weren’t taking it lightly, though. A public protest was underway in the town (or village, you’d call it in England: Princeton isn’t that big). That weekend the protesters paraded down the main street, some wearing foam rubber antlers, others carrying placards proclaiming: “The deer live here too”, “Stop this senseless slaughter”, and so on. It was serious enough to merit a police presence: I saw one patrol car parked by the curb: no sign of the cops.

Three hundred and twenty of the darling beasts were scheduled for destruction, and the State had hired gunslingers armed with hunting rifles to lay bait and do the deadly deed. Trouble was, the deer were making a nuisance of themselves – and America has a short way with nuisances. People were getting killed as deer dashed across the road in front of cars. They were eating the bark from the trees, damaging gardens and raiding the trash skips, spreading beer cans and plastic wrappings all around.

Besides which, they stink. Walking back home after work along Lenape Trail, as was my want (I never bought a car the whole time I lived there) I nearly bumped into a herd of these creatures browsing on the lawn outside neighbouring apartments. In the dark I smelt them before I saw them. Imagine somebody who never washes, sleeps rough and always wears the same clammy leather jacket and no underpants. Well, if you’re a deer, I guess there’s no option about any of that.

Gazing out the window one day during an impromptu break from my gruelling programming work – I actually merited a cubicle with some daylight – I saw another herd of a dozen or so come bounding across the parking lot. I envied them their freedom and exuberance, especially during the working day, plus the fact they were roaming the countryside in straight lines, completely ignoring whatever happened to be there by courtesy of mankind, whether car parks, fences or roads. Words like “trespass” and “jaywalking” are not in their vocabulary.

No doubt about it: the world would be a tidier place without deer. But a poorer place, I think. We only pay attention to the bad: we have no idea of the good there is in them. Wolves will tell you they are good indeed: especially fresh, warm and still quivering. But where, I ask you, are wolves to be found these days?

Perhaps that’s the problem. Deer and wolves are parts of the same package – a package we have opened and thrown away the instructions. Who’s to say what it is that deer are keeping within bounds? We shall only ever know when they are gone... to our everlasting and incurable harm.