Everything has a season.  As a native Atlantan I come by this knowledge naturally.  I was lucky enough to have a mother who knew the right way to do everything and did it better than anyone else, bless their ignorant northern hearts.  Not just the rules about white shoes and not only how to work a seating chart and correct place settings.  I’m talking the subtle things like what to wear at the funeral of a second wife that may or may not have been hanging in the wings shortly before the demise of the first.  When frosted lipstick is okay (never), when to take someone a casserole (at the first sign of a sneeze) and when a glass of wine is okay (never, it’ll send you straight to Hell).  Obviously, though I was reared properly, some of this just didn’t take.  Still, I love the idea that certain things belong at certain times of the year.  June, for me, means straw purses, Lilly Pulitzer skirts and fawns.  I get calls from well meaning people who find “orphaned” fawns.  “It was all alone, it’s mother left it!” they bleat over the phone.  They call after the poor little thing is weak and sick and after they’ve crammed milk down it’s throat for days and wonder why it’s sick.  Mother deer leave their babies alone all day.  The babies have no scent and can’t run fast yet so they snuggle up under a plant and just blend in.  They are so camouflaged that sometimes when I’m standing right next to one even I miss it.  So, I received these sick little kidnapped babies while I envision their mothers pining for them and wondering what happened.  Still, I enjoy the little sweeties and get a kick out of raising a healthy wild buck or doe to be released in the fall.  I’ve raised lots of babies and all have gone well except one.  Every mother knows her weak link.  This is the brilliant kid who will climb up into your skirt when a sweet little old lady talks to her at the grocery store.  The kid who follows you constantly, breathing heavily by the bathroom door until you’re done.  The one who wants you to come eat lunch with her at school – in 10th grade.  I had a deer like that named Zippy.  She just couldn’t separate.  While the others romped and played reindeer games, she walked from door to door around the outside of my house, just trying to catch a glimpse of me.  When the others left to go live their lives, she would sneak back in through the gate, climb up the stairs and flop down in deep depression by the door until I emerged and she could gaze, rapt, at me.

The final straw came when my husband, The Golden Goose, came home from work in suit and fabulous tie and flopped down on the bed for a moment.  Everyone knows that if a man remains horizontal for any amount of time, without a woman present, he will immediately go to sleep.  Zippy, ever on constant vigil, saw an opportunity through the french doors, maneuvered them open with her nose and crept into the bedroom and onto the bed to spoon with him.  The Golden Goose puts up with a lot, I’ll admit.  Life is, well, unusual at our house.  He tries so hard to stay unaffected and above it all, but this occasion proved to be too much.  Although he remained stoic while I heaved and pushed the full grown doe off our custom bedding and across the pristine carpet, he did have the wherewithal to mummer “not tonight, dear” before he closed his eyes again.

Zippy was soon trailered off my property and happily released elsewhere.  Although she doesn’t write home often, I know she’s thinking of me.