Tag: deer

Sketch of the Week: A Four-Point Buck Watches the Inauguration (Week 4, Jan 21 2025)

This is one of those situations where the title says it all: my mom was watching the inauguration, livid, and looked up to see this fella watching alongside her. I’m sharing it because my son found it funny, but the sketch itself didn’t sit will with me. In reality, the deer looked gravely concerned about the future of democracy, where-as in my sketch he comes off as mildly outraged that humans have once again stepped in it and tracked it all over the rug. I imagine that maybe this was a case of the artist’s feelings tainting the clarity of his vision.

Anyway, I included the quick thumbnail I sketched afterward in the bottom left, because I felt like it more faithfully captured his true posture in Mom’s snapshot. That said, he still looks pretty angry. Or maybe not angry, precisely, just disappointed. He expected us to Be Best, and we fell far short. Sorry, m’man.

A couple pencil sketches of a four-point buck (male deer) looking in through my mom's living room window.

Sketch of the Week: The Lame Buck (December 10, 2024)

A lame buck has been taking shelter around my mom’s place, and she snapped a picture that she shared with my sisters and me. He’d maybe been nicked by a car? Not bloody, but he had one leg he wasn’t using at all, just hanging limp, and was mostly spending his time bedded down. When she took the picture I used as the reference here, she was probably only about a yard away; he was right outside her TV room window.

What really struck me was how visible his ribs were. I didn’t imagine this story ending well for the buck, but a few days after I drew this she saw a group of bucks come and visit him, and then they all left together. This guy was still hobbling, but he was using all four legs and keeping up with his brethren.

The day after that I slow cooked an entirely unrelated buck’s shoulder for my wife’s extended family, who all came to visit for a day. #PureMichigan

BURIED LEDE ALERT: Japanese monkeys ride deer like ponies?!? (for Flashback Friday)

You may recall this brief news item from 2017, about “adolescent female monkeys in Japan engaging in sexual behaviors with adult deer”:

(Aside: Is anyone else weirded out that the deer always look at the camera? That doesn’t seem like happenstance. Like… is it… is it part of the kink for them? ’cause that makes me sorta feel… like, I don’t want to be made a part of this without my consent. That’s all I’m saying. I do not consent to this.)

What may have slipped past you was this parenthetical toss-off from the first—and least sensationalistic—mainstream coverage: “Scientists Say Japanese Monkeys Are Having ‘Sexual Interactions’ With Deer” (Thanks, NPR!)

Japanese macaques are known to ride deer like humans ride horses, for fun or transportation — behavior the deer seem to tolerate in exchange for grooming and discarded food.

So, just an FYI: Japanese monkeys are in the midst of domesticating deer—you know, for fun, or transportation, or (as we did before them) to increase their travel range and capacity to haul loads.  Loads, like, I dunno, the lifeless bodies of the defenseless denizens of Tokyo, after marauding teen-nympho sex monkeys start raiding that once grand metropolis, charging in under cover of night astride their deer consorts, cutting us down, smashing our skulls, and feasting on the goo within!!!  IT’S IN REVELATIONS, PEOPLE!!!

Anyway, point being there are are only two ways this story ends, and neither of them is good. Our future is either this:

or this:

(first posted back in Dec 2017; lightly revised since. no updates on macaque progress toward world domination)