My First and Last Deer

I spent a lot of time in the woods growing up. This isn’t special. It doesn’t take many trees to make a kid feel like he’s in a forest. Still, I cared enough to know the names of all the animals and most of the birds which flitted through the elm, oak, and maple trees. Where I grew up in New England, bigger animals have now made a resurgence. Turkeys, foxes, and deer wander around the suburbs now. But when I was in first grade and a deer was hit by a car outside our school, it was newsworthy. As a first-grader I found many things upsetting, but never tragic. I was profoundly sad that the deer’s punishment for trying to escape the labyrinth of neighbors’ mown lawns was death. <a href="https://medium.com/sybarite/my-first-and-last-deer-b1986001daf1">Read More</a>