Boxing Day: the ground is frozen, a hostile wind bites and the branches are bare of growth. Where are the urban deer hiding, what are they eating now, after we've been told so recently by the media that they are taking over all the parks and gardens?? If in contrast to this ungula-phobia you take Shakespeare's view of the "poor dappled fools ... native burghers of this desert city," you may want to help them out in the cruelest months of winter with a pile of greens left overnight in your garden. It's shocking to think some see the starving things as mere meat, a walking free meal for humans (which brings to mind Oscar Wilde: "nature -- that place where birds fly around uncooked").
But Shakespeare's idea is different; in As You Like It Jacques comes across a wounded deer dying beside a stream in the Forest of Arden:
"...... a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose ...
... on th'extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears."
What seemed worse to Jacques was that the other deer browsing nearby ignored him as he died, "left and abandoned of his velvet friends". As we spring about and browse from store to store hunting out one Boxing Week sale after another, should we spare a thought for the "velvet friends" out there in the cold? FILL YOUR BIRD BATHS EVERY DAY FOR BIRDS, DEER, SQUIRRELS AND RACCOONS - THEY CAN'T DRINK ICE. They wouldn't mind a few of those nuts and cranberries you've been feasting on either.
(by B. Julian)