CRAZY APES: FAKE DEER IN THE COUNTRY

 A couple of days ago, C and I drove out to Motz Lake Park about 40 minutes away. It's a county park that was once a gravel pit. My watergirl enjoys an hour-long swim in water usually warmer than our pool. I hung out in the car with a book. Usually, I would camp out under one of the big pines but this has been a bad year for skeeters and ticks in particular.

Our route from home is through farmland: wheat has already been harvested, beans are looking robust and the corn is, as high as an elephant's eye.

It always astonishes me to see in people's yards fake deer statues. Why do they have them? The deer herds in the Lower Peninsula are huge and still expanding. The long legged rats, as many gardeners call them, are everywhere. We live in an older, suburban no outlet street bordered by a large woods at one end. The damn things love hostas (aka deer crack), new growth on raspberries and have been known to come on the back deck in the middle of the night and trim down the tops of our tomato plants. WTF!!!

So, why do people put fake deer on their lawns? It's not like a deer sighting is a rare event. 

My buddy Bin would simply cite this as yet another example of "Crazy Apes" and give it little further thought. Here's my list of possible explanations:

1. Kitsch: Yeah, right up there with flamingos and garden gnomes. Some folks simply have no taste while others could be making an ironic statement.

2. Popular Cult: Older and more mainstream than the Goose Cult from the '90's when waterfowl statues clad in babuskas began appearing on front porches and gardens. I occasionally still see them today and imagine that the occupants are true believers and dress like Central/Eastern European Nanas.

3. Habit: sadly, some people have no imagination or ideas of their own. They put this stuff up because Mom and Dad or Grandpa had them.

4. Strange stuff: I've noticed that fake deer are rarely found in big towns. You usually have to travel to certain distance away from the city before you start seeing the deer. Do you enter some kind of different or parallel universe moving into the country? This is entering Stephen King territory like "Under the Dome".

5. Occult: people install the statues as some sort of deer scarecrow and/or the effigy has been anointed with some special magic powers to deter the live ones.

6. Obsessed hunters: these are the guys who wear camo all the time, subscribe to hunting magazines, have a gun rack in their pickup and live for hunting. The statues serve as a talisman to remind them of their calling-akin to people who have big crosses and Virgin Mary shrines in their yards. It keeps them focused and faithful. Their frequent earworm and favorite hymn is Ted Nugent's "Fred Bear" playing in their heads.