the mating habits of electric deer

every year our townhome managers decorate for the holidays with pine boughs and red bows on the mailboxes and such. for the past two years, out by the big townhome sign on the street, they've put up these deer-shaped lighted deer.

last year, as we waited for traffic to ease up so that we could leave the house, i giggled to dan that wouldn't it be funny to move the deer around, perhaps having some type of discovery channel mating session? dan vetoed that; he said it would be like grafitti.

this year, same thing. decorations go up and i wonder briefly if i have the stones to go out in the middle of night and re-arrange the deer into as much of a compromising position as deer could be found. and then the notion is forgotten amid the detrius of work and mundane life crap, the never-ending list that runs through my head as i sit in my car at the stop sign: did i turn on the dishwasher? did i feed the cats? do i have my purse with me?

about two weeks ago i was doing just that. we were leaving, after dark, headed towards a bookstore foray. i was sitting in the passenger seat; we were chatting about something. as we turned, i looked over my shoulder and voila! someone had read my mind! there was a lighted, moving stag mounting his very own lighted doe.

how quaint.

the next day the deer were gone, moved back to the front area near the townhome office.

go figure.

***

those deer drive me nuts, during the holidays. they aren't painted to look like the real thing; they're just wire with white lights, heads bobbing up and down. they look frighteningly like golems of the real thing. i can almost hear the pinnochio-related thoughts: but i want to be a real ungulate! i want to graze on clipped suburban lawns! i want to nibble your nasturtiums to their roots!

i don't like being out by myself at night. in fact, i'm not so keen on it during the day, either, unless i am in a public place. for whatever reason, being in barnes and noble with nine hundred other people makes me feel safer than being in the local park by myself, with just one or two other hikers.

out of nine hundred bodies at the bookstore, i'm sure that there is a better chance that one of them will be a perverted person with mayhem, mischief and assault on their mind. but my imagination paints that lone jogger on the same hiking trail as myself as much, much more scary.

last night i was supposed to meet friends at the legion in richfield, for drinks and such. i arrived and could not find them; when i got back to my car i realized that my phone was dead, so i couldn't call for clarification or anything. i decided to do some retail therapy and drove to the local wal-mart to pick up a few items needed yet for christmas prep.

as i walked up to the store i thought about how easy it would be to just be gone--be mis-placed in the sea of bodies. dan thought i was having drinks; the people i was meeting thought i was probably home. my parents and friends would think whatever they would like to think about my present existence. in the end, how long would it take before someone even realized that i was gone?

i considered briefly getting in the car and driving somewhere, and staying the night, just to see if i was missed. it was a scary thought, that momentary urge to disappear amid the throng.

i thought about how easy it would be, how simple. i thought about how much i missed my northwoods, and the safety that i felt when i was in those woods, even if it was a sham and probably imagined security.

one of the things i used to dwell on, or perhaps cling to, when i lived by myself, was the fact that a tree, standing for years in the darkness outside, could not be scared of the night. it was rooted in ground. animals, too, could not be scared of the dark--they had no choice about flipping a switch and being ensconced into the wee hours by beautiful, lovely, safe light.

this year as i plodded back to my vehicle, shopping completed, i thought again about being alone in the dark. as i drove home i thought about those ridiculous deer that bother me so, thomas edison gone horribly awry. i thought about how they could subsist in the darkness, alone or in pairs, and not feel a thing about their situation.

were they luckier, those deer, than i, for their lack of brain cell? or were they aware of their own irony: that if they were real deer, they would stumble through tight forest and browse thickets for leftover buds, all in utter blackness?

apparently that is why i'm sitting in my house, warm and well-lit, and the lighted deer are plugged in down the street.