DEER GRAMMAR

Out in the garden this morning fiddling with the firewood, moving some last year's wood to the top of a less-old stack to consolidate my equity in more manageable form - energy is one commodity sector to go for in the foreseeable investment future-- where was I - oh yes, fiddling with the firewood, when I heard an odd rustling over in the far corner of our bonsai 40 acres. I looked up, focused into the shade over there and could finally make out the shape of the young scion of these parts, heir to the Baronial estates, the as-yet unnamed teenager too new to know how things work around here, unlike his father the Baron (wonder where he is?)... 

As the noble youngster strolled elegantly into the sunshine and my clear sight, still munching some of the mitsuba that he loves and that is wildly plentiful on our property, I was standing upwind of him so he could smell me, but to be sure there were no surprises at this proximity I clunked a couple of  pieces of dry cherrywood together (great sound) to let him know I was in fact physically there and was looking at him so I knew he was there too. In response he raised his head and looked at me, his young punky horns still velvety-knobbly (a scientific term), but those eyes were not at all punky.

They were more like soft, dark and unreadable. The strong, silent type. Wild. So I raised my hand and waved goodbye at him as a hint that he should depart. My deerese is poor, plus deer grammar is so dense and the inflection so subtle, he'd probably just chuckle at my efforts in that subdued deery way. I just said "Sayonara!" in the polite Japanese version of humanese, and he - understood! He paused a moment - to assert his dignity, like any teenager - then headed down the stone stairs, out the gate and across the road, where his friend the German shepherd lives and the grass is excellent. No mitsuba there, though, so it is a step down from these royal gardens, where the gardener also raises lettuce and spinach just inside the fence that one time had an open gate...