“You’ve had some excellent posts of late,” he said in an email.

“That’s what I get paid the big bucks for, Will, the big bucks,” I replied. “I actually have a post in draft form about a big buck. No kidding.”

There is a big buck, though not in my bank account.
He probably won’t last the hunting season.
Some hunters from Devils Lake caught sight of him and asked about our land.
“I’m sorry, it’s posted” was our reply.
Someone else has permission, essentially, to kill this buck.
He’s not that big.
But he does have antlers on his head.
Six points on each side at least, I counted one night, as he stood silently at the end of our driveway.
Safe in the boundaries of the yard, and in the cloak of dark night.
He stood there. In my headlights.
So I counted the points on his antlers.
“It’s too bad,” I thought again, “That we couldn’t put fake antlers on the does just long enough to get the hunters to shoot.”
But no. The population will continue to explode until the female deer sprout a large rack.
(And not that kind.)
So the deer huddle up in our yard, at night, venturing out.
And the buck slips in and out of the trees, a ghost, because of his antlers.