In the spot in our living room where we usually raise our Christmas tree for the season, stands a dead piebald deer with all-seeing glass eyes. She keeps watch from a sleigh-shaped wooden platform scattered with pine straw, bark and wintering weeds to make the setting look natural.
To fully get the picture, you have to understand how small is our old cracker-style farmhouse: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, living room, kitchen, utility, and a narrow enclosed side porch we call our den. Put the deer in the den, you say? No. Already there is a huge buck head and two monster bass, one with a catfish stuck in its gullet. It looks like a fish with two tails, because in the process of the bigger fish trying to gobble the smaller one, the catfish opened its fins and got stuck.
So, how did a white and liver-pied doe, in full mount, get laid to rest in my crowded little living room? And more importantly, what am I going to do with her?
My husband, the hunter, shot the piebald a while back and brought her home for every man in 3 counties to ooh and ahh over. I thought it was a goat! And the women—all have begun to pity me and offer solutions to my problem of how to get rid of the mount and still stay married to my husband of 42 years.
At the beauty shop, when I told the story of the deer, everybody sang out at once, “Oh, I’m so sorrry!” Same commiserating tone women use when you tell them your husband has left you for a younger woman. One hairdresser suggested that I put the deer outside and dress it up as Rudolph for Christmas, then leave it there for Valentine’s Day to decorate as Cupid. Then come Easter—Peter Rabbit. Another, knowing of my high ceilings, suggested that I suspend the doe like a bicycle on a wall mount. My son has a game room in his new house but, for obvious reasons, his wife forbids him to take it.
Well, I don’t have the heart to get rid of the deer. Used to, I would have kept moving it from room to room till my husband could no longer remember where it was last and then give up trying to find it after I’d banished it to the outside shed. In other words, if his stuff didn’t fit into my current design scheme, or décor, out it went.
Up till now, everything my husband owned inside the house had been crammed into his 2x4 bedroom closet, about the same length and width as …well…as Piebald. If he decided to leave me today, with all his belongings, he wouldn’t have to make but one trip to his truck. Of course, I mean, without his deer. I will…would…have to help him haul his deer out.
Outside, his turf, I’ve solved the problem of concealing his treasures. I’ve planted English Ivy around any machine that hasn’t moved in less than a year. We have a topiary push lawnmower, a topiary motorcycle, and best of all a topiary 1967 hood-heavy Olds bought right after we got married. It is true what they say about English Ivy: the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps.
Actually, I could plant ivy in a pot next to my husband’s reclining chair—his throne—and soon have a topiary king. Or better yet, a topiary deer.
No, I intend to suffer the deer in silence, maybe hoping a burglar will break in and steal her while we’re gone. I know she’s rare and very valuable; I saw the bill from the taxidermists for $1,500. Maybe a buck in rut will crash through a window and attack her. I’m just glad she can no longer reproduce.
Anyway, I’ve lived too long to care about what others think of me and my house. My husband is too “dear” now for me to deny him this, his greatest treasure. He loves Piebald so much that if he dies before I do I may place her at the head of his grave instead of a headstone.
Now, that’s a thought. (not sure about this last line, Sara)