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You know, I routinely get mocked for keeping the ashes of our deceased pets in our bar. I\u2019m just floating that out there. Keep that in mind while you read.<\/p>\n
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The deer antlers didn\u2019t move for weeks. Hunting season passed, and still the deer antlers lingered. They were on the old end table I keep in the garage. The kids\u2019 yard toys winter in there; maybe the deer antlers were doing the same?<\/p>\n
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Each time I passed the antlers, I paused to consider them. OK, so they\u2019re important to Don. Was he waiting for me to move them to the laundry room? I try to not touch his stuff, even though, if we\u2019re really talking here, his stuff is always in the wrong place. He doesn\u2019t think so, but he also doesn\u2019t think that stuff placement is rigorous. He thinks where one puts one\u2019s stuff is open for discussion. Fluid and optional.<\/p>\n
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But if I do the humane thing, which is to put his wrongly placed stuff in the right place, he gets pissy. It\u2019s nothing he says, it\u2019s just the look. The body language. Maybe it has something to do with his stuff always belonging in the trash.<\/p>\n
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So I didn\u2019t touch the deer antlers. I don\u2019t understand what makes the deer antlers so important, but then he doesn\u2019t understand why I have seen Hamilton<\/em> four times.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Christmas came, and I began to wonder. Do I start charging the antlers rent? Buy them a gift? Say<\/em> something to Don about them?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n New Year\u2019s Day came. We have a big party on New Year\u2019s Day. I was in and out of the garage all day, moving food and drinks. I invited the antlers to the party. My grandparents used to host this very New Year\u2019s Day party. My grandfather\u2019s motto? There\u2019s always room for more. He meant people, but surely he\u2019d be open to antlers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The kids went back to school. I took down the Christmas lights, shedding them from the front yard shrubbery like, well, like a deer<\/a> sheds antlers<\/a>. Pressed for time, I tossed the lights into the garage, intending to properly store them in a few days. I\u2019d had a new refrigerator<\/a> installed in the garage just before Christmas. When I put the lights away, I had resolved to properly store and stock that fridge.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In case you\u2019re interested, the Backcountry Journal<\/em><\/a> has a great piece about applying the activity of shed antler hunting to transition to financially sustainable hunting. It\u2019s interesting, but then I live in a different world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It took me a good week and a half to get back out to the garage. I\u2019d been hit with a virus that laid me up for days. Fortunately, I discovered a Belgian mini-series on Netflix. Hotel Beau Sejour<\/em>. I forgot the antlers, dedicated to my quest for whoever killed Kato.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But a January Saturday brought about the reality of the work needed in the garage. It was unseasonably warm, so the kids and Pete the beagle ran around the yard as I stored and organized. The three of them ran in and out of the garage, the kids looking for toys (go ahead) and sodas (forget it). Pete was sniffing out the peanut butter in the mouse traps.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He tripped two traps but zero body parts. It was a good day for Pete.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I passed in and out of the garage, I could smell, well, something wretched. We\u2019ve had a squirrel, tons of mice, even a snake set up housekeeping in our garage, although I like to pretend that last critter never happened. Maybe one of those little fellas Airbnb\u2019d the garage. Maybe my new tenant was unaware of the \u201cno pooping\u201d rule in the garage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But when I saw the antlers, I became very suspicious. Here I was, contemplating Christmas presents and party invites for those antlers and they repay me by stinking up my garage? I mean, I only thought about throwing them away once. A day. For months. Was fouling my garage a proportional response<\/a>? I think Aaron Sorkin and the West Wing<\/em> crew would say \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I gently sniffed the air above the bagged antlers. A little putrid, but difficult to discern if they were the culprit. I bent closer to the bag. Yeah, still pretty rancid, but reasonable doubt lingered. I placed my face against the bag and inhaled deeply.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yep. The antlers had gone funky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I told Don. I mean, the poor antlers. Abandoned to the cold garage, forgotten and lonely. To tell the one person in the world who loves them that they had gone rotten\u2026.I couldn\u2019t do it. That\u2019s just unnecessarily cruel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Also, I forgot about them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another week passed, and my parents gave me more things to store in my garage as they transitioned out of their house. Thankfully, it wasn\u2019t vegetables. I had to rearrange the garage a bit; storing my parents\u2019 boxes of Christmas decorations is a bit like playing Tetris.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The reshuffling required me to evict the antlers from the end table. I felt bad, especially with the boxed Christmas decorations that weren\u2019t even mine taking up so much real estate. But then I picked up the antlers, and I immediately saw that the antlers were not going to get back their security deposit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beneath the antlers, tens of maggots squirmed on the end table. The end table where my children had been rooting for toys just days before. They wriggled in complaint of their meal\u2019s sudden disappearance, falling to the garage floor, squirming toward my toes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Terrifying. Everyone knows maggots are aggressive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The bag of antlers was clutched in my fist. I turned to give them a good talking to. And that\u2019s when I realized that the bag was full of maggots too, some of them trailing bloody goo behind them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Remember how I placed my face against that bag and inhaled deeply just a week before?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I tolerate a lot being married to an outdoorsman. I don\u2019t mind the 10-day trips with no communication. I\u2019m fine when he serves squirrel at parties. It\u2019s cool the rear third of our office looks like the bargain den at Cabela’s<\/a>. But maggots throwing down over deer antlers in my garage? I draw the line.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Does Don have a line? I don\u2019t think so. He\u2019s supportive of the fifty-plus boxes of Dickens Village pieces my mom has stored in that same garage. He held my hand when I cried during every episode of Star Trek: Picard<\/em>. He never said a word about the coin I dropped at Comic-Con.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What can I say? Outdoorsmen are better people<\/a> than us innies<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember what happened after I saw the maggots writhing in the bag of deer antlers. I definitely evicted them from my garage. They were hung out to dry \u2013 literally. The maggots are gone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Don\u2019s defense, I\u2019d like to say we have a freezer full of meat, thanks to that deer. He\u2019s fed our family. We\u2019re grateful. There was no intentional disrespect<\/a> toward our deer. Every part was used.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wendirank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-01-at-5.42.51-AM-300x266.png\")
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