Miasmatic Review

Faunacide in the city.

It’s been a while since I’ve regaled you all with a tale of my cruelness to my minions, so I thought I would share a little incident that happened today… strictly for your mirth.

This morning I heard two of my thralls talking about killing a deer in order to make sausage. Of course, my interest was peeked, killing deer and eating it, how any red blooded American re-enacting male could not want to get in on this. When I asked what brought this up, since neither “J-man” or “Big-T” seem to be the hunter type, they tell me that minion “Sherby” killed a deer with her truck on the way to work. Jumping out of my chair, I exclaim, “What? A dead deer ready for the taking? Where?” Visions of a new deer hide and fresh meat for the weekend filled my head.

Plans of field dressing the deer in the parking lot were dashed when they said, someplace on Spring Creek RD. They weren’t exactly sure, but it had been a couple of hours since the incident and Spring Creek is a pretty busy road. Walking over to Sherby’s desk, I start asking her questions.

Me: “I hear you killed a deer this morning.”

Sherby: “It was an accident, it jumped out in front of me. I hit it with my Dad’s truck.”

Me: “Did you grab the deer? Did you call the police?”

Sherby: “The deer was too big for me to pick up, so I left it on the side of the road. It wasn’t an adult deer, but it was still too big for me. Why would I call the police?”

Me: “Because in Illinois if you hit a deer with your vehicle, it is the law that you contact the police, plus you’ll need the report for the insurance company. Where did you hit the deer at?” (You do have to contact the police if you hit a deer; this is true)

Sherby: “I hit it on Spring Creek down by the river. My dad only has liability, so we won’t be filing a claim with the insurance.” (She hit the deer in downtown Rockford! All the luck! By this time, the crews would have cleaned it up, it would have been flattened in traffic or the homeless would be eating better then I am tonight!)

Me: “You still want to contact the police. If you don’t they can charge you with leaving the scene of motor vehicle accident with a fatality. You don’t want the police showing up at your dad’s door to drag him away do you? You left a dead deer in downtown Rockford, where there are cameras and witnesses that can identify the vehicle.” (The police will NOT charge you with leaving the scene of a MVA with a Fatality for reducing the surplus deer population.)

Sherby (looking worried): “Killing a deer is considered a fatality?”

Me: “Of course it died. It’s like a homicide, except it’s a faunacide. Instead of dealing with a human you have an animal” As far as I know there is no such thing as a faunacide, I believe I made that word up on the spot. UPDATE: Actually googling it, there appears that someone else came up with it before me.

Sherby: “Is that bad?”

Me: “Well yea, it falls under the animal cruelty laws. It’s a felony in this state. It’s equal to clubbing kittens with a golf club” (lie, lie, lie… BTW, I just liked that analogy so I used it, there is no special law for clubbing kittens with a golf club.)

Sherby (eyes wide and teary); “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to hit the deer!”

Me: “What if that had been a kid you had hit? Would you have meant to hit the kid, probably not? Because this is a deer that makes it okay? That’s just wrong. That poor deer was out, enjoying life and trying just to survive and you go and squash its head with the front of your truck. Now the poor little deer will never be able to grow up and enjoy life. At least when a hunter kills a deer they eat it and use the carcass. Not you, no you just leave its lifeless body on the side of the road where its death is meaningless!” (Did I mention she is an animal lover? No… ahhh, now it’s funnier!)

Sherby (eyes misting over, voice shaky): “That’s not what I meant; I never meant to hurt anything. I wouldn’t hurt an animal. I don’t know what to do.”

Me: “What I would do, if I were you, is call the police. Tell them that you hit the deer and that you just now where able to get to a phone. They will tell you exactly what you need to do. You should still be in an acceptable time frame, so I don’t foresee any problems.” (This was legit advice. She did need to call them and even though it was technically a lie, since she didn’t know she had to call the police until now, this was the first chance she had to call them).

Sherby (looking better) “Thanks Mr. Contagion. I’ll do that now.”

Twenty minutes pass, I walk back over to Sherby.

Me: “Sherby, what did the police say? Are they going to charge you with Faunacide?” (Because cops charge people with crimes over the phone?)

Sherby (looking releaved) “Luckily no… I just need to go file an accident report.”

Me: “You got lucky this time!”

Later when she left to go to lunch with minion Blond-T, I asked who was driving. Minion Blond-T responded she was. This set up this parting shot:

Me: “Good now maybe more innocent deer won’t be slaughtered at the hands of the Sherby.”

I couldn’t help but laugh while Sherby gave me the evil eye and Blond-T laughed.