As I was putting my shoes on this morning I gazed out the window without really paying attention to what I was looking at.

Movement caught my eye.

A deer!

Of all the wild kingdom critters we get out back, deer are still my favorite. As he (it was probably a she, but I still write he because it has one fewer letter… I’m just efficient that way) moved behind a tree and temporarily out of sight, I looked around for more deer. There weren’t any that I can see, which probably means there were 100 of them because those suckers know how to camouflage themselves like you wouldn’t believe.

So left with one deer in sight I did what any normal American would do on the day before Christmas Eve, I looked closely to see if this deer had a glowing red nose.

Now I know he’s not a reindeer. I’m not an idiot, you know, but given that all of the reindeer in the Rankin and Bass Christmas specials look just like your garden variety white tailed deer that you can see in just about any state in the Union, I thought that maybe it was a reindeer just trying to blend in with the locals. As I stated before, they can camouflage the shit out of themselves.

Nope. No glowing red nose. He even looked directly at the house at one point. If his nose was red, there is no way I would have missed it. Still, I started singing a little tune on the assumption that our back yard woods deer was one of Santa’s reindeer in disguise.

You know Dasher and… none of the others, cause he’s the only one out there….

The song kinda ran out of gas at that point. I decided to leave off the introduction part and just start with the melody that most people know.

That deer that’s in the woods there
Nosing around the leaves.
He is the only one out there.
are the others on sick leave?

All of the other deer there
Decided not to show their face.
They just left this one deer
to wander all around the place.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve Eve
Santa came to say.
I am kinda screwed you know
Where did all those other deer go.

But all the other deer loved him
Even though they decided to flee.
Those human things are crazy
Let them eat him not me.

That was fun, wasn’t it? As our one deer visiter friend left the area behind our house so that we couldn’t see him anymore, I realized something troubling…

I have that damn Christmas song stuck in my head.

Oh no! The horror! The horror! The horror!