Late last year, my childhood best friend killed himself in his childhood bedroom with a cheap shotgun from the sporting goods store. When I got the phone call, I was walking in the forest behind my mothers apartment. As I listened to the details of his death, I saw a deer watching me from within a bush just five feet away. I instinctively grabbed my camera and photographed it. When I developed the film a few days later, there was no deer on the negative.
Rusty called me to tell me that his beloved dog Jake had died. He said that on Jake’s last day, while they were out walking the fields on their farm, a deer came out of the woods and approached Jake snout to snout, and teased him to give chase. He said that the deer was playful and without fear. Later that afternoon, Rusty looked out the window and saw Jake dead underneath an oak tree. He said that the deer was an angel who came to take him away.
I live behind an abandoned forest that used to be a landfill. It’s a two hundred acre fenced in area that over the past few years has had a burgeoning deer population that have outgrown the forest and are beginning to venture out into the city.
Earlier this year I watched a young buck die in an apartment buildings backyard two miles away from the forest. The deer had wandered too far into the city and had lost his way. A group of neighbors gathered around the backyard watching the deer take its last breaths as white foam spilled from its mouth.
My neighbor and I had spent the previous few weeks following this buck around and he let us get very close to him. I would feed him underneath an overpass and we cut holes in the fence for him to walk through.
Earlier this year I watched a young buck die in an apartment buildings backyard two miles away from the forest. The deer had wandered too far into the city and had lost his way. A group of neighbors gathered around the backyard watching the deer take its last breaths as white foam spilled from its mouth.
My neighbor and I had spent the previous few weeks following this buck around and he let us get very close to him. I would feed him underneath an overpass and we cut holes in the fence for him to walk through.
The city has begun bulldozing the forest for development. Today they flattened the entire two hundred acres leaving building sized piles of timber laying neatly on the freshly exposed ground. The machinery drove the deer away from the only land they have ever known. They are now permanently taking refuge underneath the overpass and the railroad tracks that border the edge of the city.
I spoke to my friend two weeks before his suicide. He called me on my lunch break after not having spoken for a couple of years. While we were on the phone, I was watching a middle aged woman walking down tenth avenue. She was watching her reflection in the glass skyscraper windows as her short skirt was sweeping up with the wind. She took pleasure in peoples reactions as they noticed that she wasn’t wearing underwear.
A block away, she walked over a man who was stabbing a needle into the raw flesh of his leg as he struggled to find a vein. His blood was dripping onto the hot concrete and pooling next to another mans head that laid next to him unconscious.
A block away, she walked over a man who was stabbing a needle into the raw flesh of his leg as he struggled to find a vein. His blood was dripping onto the hot concrete and pooling next to another mans head that laid next to him unconscious.