Killing Bambi good for the liver?

One of the most heartwarming news items during an eventful 2008 was N&O columnist Ruth Sheehan's account of a State Capitol Police officer who bonded with a fawn that was running wild in a clump of forest in downtown Raleigh.

The incident brought to mind a mountain-bred philosopher's observation about the consumption of "demon rum": "One man gets drunk and goes home and writes a poem. Another man gets drunk and goes home and beats his wife."

There's similar irony in the fact that one man will exult in the taming of a wild thing while another feels an incredible high from killing the same wild thing.

I can identify with Officer Wayne Muller's moment of epiphany. Two summers ago a bluebird came to trust me enough to eat live mealworms from the palm of my hand. Then, perching on my shoulder, it looked me in the eye as if to say, "More, please. More!"

My hair, what remains of it, stood on end.

Ah, yes, I bribed the bird. Officer Muller established his friendship with the fawn simply by frequent visits, his friendly voice calling out "Here, Buck-ee! Come on boy. Daddy's here!' etc., until the animal came confidently to him to have its ears scratched or engage in a head-butting game with its two-legged friend.

This is not a condemnation of deer hunters but, rather, an observation of the complexities and variances of our individual psyches. After all, as Ernest Hemingway insists in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," killing animals can "restore a man's masculinity and clean out his liver."

My deer-hunting friends wisely point out that the deer population needs thinning. And yes, too many Bambis can be a nuisance, especially in the far western and eastern regions of the state, raiding cornfields, gardens and flower beds.

A niece in the foothills constantly complained that deer devoured her pansies every autumn. Last year she came home from church quite excited because someone had told her that urine around the bed's borders would be a foolproof deer deterrent.

That night at dusk, her husband went out and performed the honors. It worked. The deer did not return. And for good reason. Tim, with aim as inaccurate as a third-string forward shooting 3-pointers, had inadvertently killed most of the pansies.

Some years ago, a backsliding hunter by the name of Leonard T. Ward wrote an unforgettable letter to advice columnist Ann Landers describing an emotional moment after he had fired into a flight of Canada geese, bringing down two.

Ward described how the male bird lay on the beach, gasping as the wounded female dragged her body to his side, covered him with her broken wing, laid her head against his breast and died.

Ward said he wrapped the birds in his hunting coat and buried them there in the sand. On the way home, he threw his gun and belt into the bay.

"Hunters will call me a right poor sport and scoff at what I did," Ward wrote. "But that day something broke in my heart. Shoot again? God forbid."

I reiterate: It's difficult for some to see the sport in killing, since in most cases the odds overwhelmingly favor the hunter. That is, unless, for example, he is faced with a charging rhino and his elephant gun has jammed.

But hunters and hunting are and always have been essential to our existence. Poets only make that existence more palatable.

A better choice

President-elect Barack Obama's choice of conservative minister Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation prompted mutterings of discontent among the ranks of liberal supporters.

Obama could have done worse. He could have chosen a lawyer.

The late Sen. Sam Ervin once told of a young lawyer who was called on to pray at a revival meeting.

He prayed a prayer from a lawyer's heart: "Stir up much strife amongst thy people, Lord, lest thy servant perish."