Feb-Roo-Airy!

...is obviously NOT when this photo was taken! But oh, how I need to see the green grass, and leaves on the trees that have been stark raving bare naked since seemingly forever (or at least as long as we've lived here).  Don't get me wrong, there's still a beauty and a certain peacefulness and calm in the winter woods, where everything is literally black and white and cold and deserted, and all the magic that is hidden away under the shadows of summer is exposed for all the world to see.  The trees are plentiful enough out here that, even sans foliage, they make an impressive barrier between you and whatever is on the other side.  But it's a wall of sticks.  Nothing can hide there.  The silence is as deafening as the air is frigid.  I long to hear the sound of leaves rustling in the warm summer breeze.  I want to be able to stand out there and immerse myself in nature and forget that there's even such a thing as "inside".  All the animal tracks we can see in the snow now just reinforce the idea that those woods, the woods like the ones in the photo above, will be alive and teeming with life in a few short months, rather than standing around desolate and barren and full of potential and/or promise. 

Yep. Gotta love living in the upper Midwest.  I know I've stated this before, but Spring Fever is hitting me particularly hard this winter, and while I don't want to wish time away faster than it needs to go, I do wish spring and summer would hurry up and get here. And then stick around for a while.

In case you haven't seen my FB recently, my latest enamoration is deer in our yard.  This has further led me to all kinds of conflicted feelings.  I'm an animal lover, but not one of those super die-hard animal lovers who is completely and totally against, say, hunting.  I'm not a hunter, but I'm not against other people hunting.  If my hubby, who is (or should I say has been) a hunter, wants to shoot one of those deer in our backyard (legally, in season), theoretically I don't mind.  It's a hunter's perfect scenario, isn't it?  Getting a deer right off your own deck?  I mean, if I could fish from my back step, I totally would, but it doesn't work that way.  I know there's a deer overpopulation problem around here. I know they cause a lot of damage because of that, especially when they get out on the highway and people hit them with their cars, and such.  There are deer in the city, for crying out loud.  There shouldn't be deer in the city.  They should all be out here, in the wilderness, living their little wilderness critter lives.  

But then I see them and their little wilderness critter selves in my backyard, which is all covered in snow, scrounging around for something to eat, and I imagine what it would be like to be a hunter and to pull up my rifle and shoot one of those beautiful, innocent animals that is doing absolutely nothing wrong but trying not to starve to death in the middle of a world that has been taken over by selfless humans... and I can't do it.  I can't pull the imaginary trigger.  It's just a creature trying to survive out there, just like the rest of us.  

My parents always said I'd've made a horrible farm girl.  It's true!  I have nothing against eating meat.  As long as I didn't know it first.  :)  True story -- once upon a time, I went with the hubby when he went deer hunting.  Mostly just to have a weekend away, as I had no intention of joining him in the woods or trying to take down Bambi's dad.  Well, as (my) luck would have it, my hubby got himself a deer that weekend. And we didn't have a trailer with us, just our good ol' trusty Chevy Venture minivan.  So that dead deer rode home from Up North in the back of the minivan.  Well, mostly in the back of the minivan...her head was basically intruding upon the front space (on the floor -- hubby, in his wisdom, had removed the back 2 rows of seats, so picture Bambi's mom laying on the floor...well, on a sled on the floor of the minivan with the back 2 rows of seats removed) with her big, brown eyes looking at me the whole time.

The moral of the story is that I could not eat that deer.  I never saw her alive, but riding home with her body in the back of my minivan was close enough.  Believe me, I wanted to! I want to like venison.  I wanted to enjoy the meat that my hubby had provided for our little family.  But I couldn't.  I just kept seeing those big, brown eyes, staring up at my from the back of my minivan.  I think I tried a bite or two but couldn't do more than that.

But, wait! There's more.  There was the year we raised chickens!  We started out with a couple as pets, and that went well, so we got a bunch of chicks one year with the sole purpose of growing them up to eat them.  Oddly enough, it was easy to NOT get attached to them. Most of them.  ;)  Chickens are fun to watch, and to have around (they eat bugs and rodents and weeds) but they can also be disgusting (they also eat each other if the opportunity arises) and sometimes not friendly.  And they poop all over if they're free-range, which ours were.  I felt no love lost when it came time to butcher them. In fact, I was glad, because they were getting too big for their little legs and it kind of disgusted me that they were even bred that way.  

But, you know what? I still couldn't eat them.  Again, I really wanted to, because chicken is one of the meats I generally love, but I could not eat a single bite of our own chickens.  Even worse, I couldn't eat any of the eggs from the layers, either.  That part really made me mad, because I love me some eggs, and having that many at our disposal was like winning the lottery.  But, nope.  As soon as I cracked one open, my appetite went right out the door.  

I know what you're wondering now.  Do I eat the fish that we catch?  The answer is No, I don't.  But that's because I'm allergic to fish.  I don't know if I would be able to eat them if I were not allergic.  I used to when I was a kid, so maybe?  

And here ends another chapter of Things You Didn't Know You Wanted To Know About Me.  Thanks for reading!