When I was out walking the dogs this morning they started tracking some barrow deer (which are burrowing deer we have around here). They got their name from the First People (who call themselves The People and not The First People, in the same way that we call it The United States and not The First United States because they did not (as we do not) wander around in a state of precognition that some bastards were going to blunder in from another dimension and kill most of us with alien diseases and guns and torture and shit, and when there’s just a heart-rending rump of us left give us a hearty kick in the nuts every time they even notice we still exist. Pretty much the correct response when you see one of the survivors of this morally-haywire ongoing genocide is to throw yourself prostrate, lay your wakizashi on the ground before you and just see what happens.)

Anyway barrow deer since the beginning of time will occasionally get into a burial ground and make a complete hash of it. The traditional solution to this was to keep a continuous fire of poison sumac going in the center of the burial ground. This took a great deal of courage and skill since inhaling the smoke from poison sumac inflames the lining of the lungs.

We live right next door to a cemetery. Story is that back in 1964 a whole herd of barrow deer got in there after hours one evening and by morning there was an unholy pile of Aaberg, Erickson, Askelund and Sonderby bones, after which the cemetery board approved an eight-foot above-ground, eight-foot below electrified fence with its own backup generator, which we can hear from our house whenever it fires up and it makes the dogs howl.

Barrow deer are gentle and no big deal (dead grandmas aside). What really bothers me is the big mothers they have in the swamps of northeastern Minnesota. The common name is the same but they’re actually a different species, Alces Tumulus. They have humongous antlers with their own moss (I’m tempted to say their own microclimate) and weigh up to 1800 pounds. When you feel the peat heaving under your boots, you run. They won’t hurt you on purpose but a one-ton barrow deer can do you a whole world of accidentally.

Anyway the dogs backed off on about my fifth whistle and we watched the dirt fly up out of the hole and the rain pounded it straight into mud.

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