ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS

Snowshoeing with my brothers and a friend in the woods that surround the house, I spy red flecks in the snow. We tromp off the trail toward it and find a deer bed spotted with bright red blood. But here is the mystery: it snowed all night, but not since morning; the deer bed has only very recently been vacated, as evident in the freshness of the imprint and the surface-level of the bloodspotting; and yet there is no sign of the deer nor any tracks, human or animal, leading to or from the bed.

Despite our best clomping-around detective work, aided by Emmett's avid snowplowing nose, we can't figure it out. There is no explanation for what injured the deer or how it left or if it lived. Despite the evidence of warm, pulsing life--red blood and a bed just slept in--the thing itself is gone, and it's not for us to know.

Emmett chews on some bloodsicles. We shake the snow off our mittens and cut back to the trail to head down the hill.

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A young deer--just past fawn, not yet recognizably buck or doe--appears in the driveway and stands in the pool of light from the garage light, which gleams extra-bright on the white snow. You can tell the deer is young because it walks right into the spotlight and gazes directly our way, no hesitation or trepidation. I've seen this before with baby skunks, baby woodchucks, baby mice--young animals will just sit there and look right back at you, stupidly, adorably bold.

The deer nonchalantly scratches its ear and looks around, and then it wanders casually back down the driveway. We are just a pack of humans standing out in the cold, bald bipeds, woefully underequipped, peering into the dark where it disappeared.

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Horses impassively watch us cross-country ski by as snow gathers thickly on their backs. My feelings about horses are changing. I was obsessed with them as a girl: wrote novels about them, drew them obsessively, wore red cowboy boots, read Black Beauty over and over, even tended for a year a rotund black lazy mare who was the equine equivalent of my cat Seven. (For real.) Now I look at them and they seem less like my youthful fantasy of a long-lashed thousand-pound soulmate and more like very different souls altogether, which we saddle and ride with metal bits in their mouths. I wonder, what makes you happy? Do you like being ridden? You are approximately the tenth smartest animal--what do you think about? What do you think of us? Do you like us?

When I was ten or so, a crafty four-year-old Appaloosa mare pulled the inflating-belly trick, puffing up while we buckled on a riding pad, then exhaling so the strap was comfortably loose. I gave her a heel-kick, she broke into a trot, and the pad began to slip sideways with every bumpy step. I was quickly shaken loose like the pesky burr I must have been to her, deposited on the ground uninjured but stunned. In retrospect I can't really blame her.

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A group of wild turkeys are wandering across the road on the outskirts of my small Ohio town, from woods side to farmhouse side. I slow to a stop and watch them cross the road, leisurely yet purposeful. They are so big, sturdy and pragmatic, modest dark feathers and discreetly rouged faces.

I think that in these times of belt-tightening and nuts-and-bolts, it would be appropriate to switch from the imperious bald eagle--that high-flying loner with a head as white as the founding fathers' wigs--to the modest wild turkey, a ground-dweller who prefers company and knows how to live on what it can find beneath its feet.