Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Friday, July 16, 2004

Freak Out!

I'm sure my arachnophobic friends will grin at the payback of my going the bathroom this morning, changing the toilet paper, doing my business, and then noticing the smushed spider (I presume, from the legs, as it was no longer in any coherent articulation) in the bit of tissue I'd just used.  I like spiders.  I don't particularly like spiders ON me, and there were a few moments whilst I calculated whether the creature had been on the toilet paper or on me, and whether I'd killed it in using the paper (it's something I'm not supposed to do, at least on purpose, religion-wise, sort of like Jews not eating pork).
 
And before they say, 'I'm never coming into your house again!', it's an aberration, and for all I know it was in the roll from the store.
 
Second bit of freak-out:
 
So, I'm on my way to work, tooling down Beaver Creek Drive, and there is a pickup truck with a full-blown, stuffed DEER in the back, missing an ear, and without any sort of rack, so it may have been a doe.  Besides the mind-boggling cost of taxidermy, it just was too surreal.  Granted, I live in a state where many small newspapers print photos of the latest 'catch', with a proper record of points, but...this was just weird.  Not to mention, if the deer were taxidermied, I don't think anyone actually ate it, and that is a waste.  Even though I'm a vegetarian, I'm not entirely opposed to hunting--I just believe that if you kill it, you should be willing to eat it, and vice versa.  I'm surprised they didn't just tie it to the hood as some sort of ornament. Sheesh. 
 
PS I've been told by some acquaintances who are more familiar with deer hunting that it might be a target used for practice, since they can be very lifelike.  On the other hand, it seemed to have the fur of an actual deer, and it didn't seem to have holes or anything in it.  Any ideas? 
 
PPS It is indeed a deer target; I drove by on the way home and it's modular foam from the back, and less life-like.  Also I was informed that deer, like horses, have hair, not fur (although I thought technically people were the only ones who had hair; there's a question to research for myself). Still, it's probably like the difference between fruit and vegetables...tomatoes are technically fruit in the botanical sense, but they're recognised as a vegetable by most, that sort of thing.




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