Deer Can Swim
That was the summer when a faint, persistent pain eventually led to an ultrasound, and I found myself the subject of a scene I knew well from movies and TV. But something was wrong with this picture. Reclining in my disposable gown, watching my womb in 2-D on the screen—larger than life, and much grayer—there was no beaming partner by my side, holding my hand, holding back tears of joy. There was no human likeness of a fiddlehead fern curled up in the dark, waiting to unfurl. And there was no tiny heartbeat to hear while childlike wonder rearranged the lines on my face into something fresh and beautiful.
Instead, there was the technician maneuvering a beeping probe through the nooks and crannies of my insides—her bedside manner kind, wedding ring gleaming—until finally, there it was. An end to the mystery. My IUD had slipped out of place slightly, and it was poking where no pointy foreign object should ever dare to poke. For almost a decade, Old Trusty had served her mission, but the time had come for a return to dry land.
Thankfully, it was an easy fix; just remove, replace, move on. I had nothing to complain about. Having turned 40 that summer, and having been single for about a million years, I’d grown accustomed to the child-free life, with all its sleep, money, autonomy, relative freedom from sickening worry, and the list of pros goes on. Plus, a misplaced IUD sure beats cancer, which is right where my mind went when the vague pain wouldn’t go away despite all my efforts to ignore it. So the appointment was essentially a success.
There was only one catch: the episode forced me to admit that no matter what I told myself, I still wanted a child, and I was sick of trying to prevent something I secretly longed for. I was between situationships at the time, so I decided to just take a break from contraception. Before long, “get new IUD” had dropped to the bottom of my to-do list, and I’d pretty much forgotten the whole incident. Not completely, though, because when my therapist asks for something from that summer she can add to my timeline, the empty ultrasound almost pops out of my mouth.
But I prefer not to talk about that. And besides, my uneventful medical exam was nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to what happened that summer with the deer.
*
Here in the far corner of the Pacific Northwest, there’s maybe one Columbian black-tailed deer to every twenty humans. They look well-fed and not terribly stressed. The way this college town blurs the lines between forest and city—a source of pride for officials and citizens alike—suits the deer beautifully. They prefer to live on the edge of forests, not in their dark depths. They keep adapting to the ever-changing environment, even while the human population keeps growing with no end in sight. I get a kick out of telling friends and family from home that the deer in my city look both ways before crossing the street, and they use crosswalks whenever available.
Even the drivers who view the deer as “hooved rats” wouldn’t dare hit one, and neither would those with regular old road rage. The collision would damage their vehicle, or at least make a mess while creating an awkward and potentially dangerous situation. Sure, there’s talk of a “deer problem,” and occasionally you’ll see a gardener shooing a family of black-tails into the neighbor’s yard by hurling blunt objects in their direction. But while some people may have a problem with the deer, it’s hard to tell whether the deer themselves have too many problems. Occasionally there’s the accidental auto collision, and a few of them seem to suffer from poor hygiene, like the doe from my alley who always had hardened feces hanging under her tail. That must have been uncomfortable, and I always wished I could just offer her a wet wipe, and I wouldn’t even have minded being the one to wield it for her. She clearly had her hands full taking care of herself and her two yearlings, the girl with the torn ear and the boy with his tiny velvet antlers.
Generally speaking, though, the deer in this city have been free from their usual predators—cougars, archers, and shooters—and overall, they come and go as they please through our many parks and neighborhoods. And so it wasn’t completely unbelievable when the walk sign came on one afternoon at Chapel and Cedar, and a multi-generational herd of about 30 deer proceeded to cross, heading for the water. Despite their prevalence in the city, it’s not exactly every day you see something like that. They don’t typically travel in such large groups, nor do they tend to gravitate toward the salty and polluted bay water. So naturally, a number of onlookers pulled out their phones, pointed, and posted.
One youngster, still sporting fawn spots, stared straight into some guy’s camera for a whole minute, stopping traffic, only scurrying along once the honking started. That video went mildly viral for a few hours. Watching it felt like looking into the eyes of something primordial, something beyond the fate of domestication—and being looked at right back. So this is what it’s like to feel seen, the caption below the video read. The thing is, though, deer have very poor vision—about 60/40—so whatever that fawn saw must have been very different, unrecognizable even, from what the phone’s owner sees when he looks in the mirror.
*
For the record, I’m no expert on deer, their vision, any of it. The internet, though, knows no shortage of fun deer facts. For example, apparently they enjoy eating poison oak in generous portions, unaffected by the itchy poison that deters humans from the plant. If my sources don’t deceive me, baby deer are born without body odor, which helps them remain undetected by predators. A mother carries her young for about seven months before giving birth, and she usually has twins, though occasionally she’ll have triplets or a single fawn. The Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus), like the ones in this city, range from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to Santa Barbara, and some have even made a life for themselves in Hawaii. But columbianus is not the only subspecies of Odocoileus hemionus, commonly called “mule deer.” There’s also O. h. sitkensis, or the Sitka deer, which lives as far north as Kodiak Island in Alaska. And then there’s O. h. hemionus, the inland mule deer who live farther east, and those guys grow to about twice the size of the Sitka and the Columbian black-tails. I could go on; I’ve got pages of notes on this stuff now. The more I learn about the deer, though, the farther I get from comprehending who they are or what happened that day.
*
A crowd had already formed by the time the strange parade appeared in my feed. I figured my bike would be the most efficient way to go see it for myself, since I wouldn’t have to worry about parking. But my timing was off—just as I was approaching the intersection separating me from the spectacle, the railroad crossing gates had already begun to lower. The passing train seemed to be hauling an eternity’s worth of freight, and as the unmarked cars passed by, and by and by and by, my frustration festered. I wanted to see what others were seeing, sure. But I also wanted to see if the deer family from my alley was part of the procession. I had never seen them outside our neighborhood, or if I had, I hadn’t recognized them. As far as I could tell, the mom whose bottom needed cleaning and her son and daughter—probably twins—usually stayed close to home.
Occasionally, an empty freight car rolled by, allowing a quick glance at the backs of the people lined up on the side of the road, overlooking the shore. I had to accept there was nothing to do but wait, so to occupy my mind, I counted the passing train cars. I saw 46 before I lost track; they were moving too fast, and finally they were gone. Both my feet were already off the ground by the time the gates started rising, and from that point, it was only about a two-minute bike ride. When I arrived, I locked my bike to a stop sign and nudged my way into the line of onlookers on the bridge. And there they were, stepping into the sand: more deer than I’d ever seen at one time, and among them, my three hooved neighbors.
It’s tempting to want to map the deer’s actions that day onto a human corollary and view the procession as some kind of march or political demonstration. Maybe they were trying to communicate something to us humans, or to each other, or to the crows or the squirrels or the gulls; maybe they weren’t. Maybe they just wanted a break from their usual routines, an afternoon spent together at the seashore. Maybe they were doing something else entirely, something beyond my limited imagination. All I can say for certain is that whatever they were doing, as I stood looking down from that bridge, I wished I could be one of them.
Of course, I couldn’t. And I’ve got things extremely good as a human; I basically live like royalty, from a global perspective. That’s what I reminded myself as I watched them gather on the beach, sharing their moment of quietude, some standing watch while others lay down to rest. I noticed the little guy from my street napping in the sand while his mom and sister sniffed, then tentatively nibbled, a pile of beached seaweed.
*
Just then, a man stinking of warm beer appeared next to me in a red cap and a camouflage vest. Fish in a barrel, he said to no one in particular as he raised an AR-15 and fixed the scope on his target. My brain groped for some other explanation—maybe this was a drill, or a prank, or a film set. But my body refused to be deluded.
If you fire that gun, I’ll haunt you in your dreams every night for the rest of your life, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. I’d never been so close to a man with an assault rifle, and my lips refused to function properly. Maybe he got the message telepathically, though, because he hesitated, refocused his aim, hesitated again, and lowered the weapon.
Fish in a goddamn barrel, he muttered, trailing a vague cloud of pain as he walked away, one shoulder hunched even though the gun was now resting against his chest.
But he didn’t get very far, because by the time my heartbeat had slowed to a more or less normal rhythm, I heard the sound of school shootings and video games and genocide coming from the end of the line of onlookers. Some people screamed and ran. Others fell into the fetal position. A few remained standing near the man and pulled out their phones to document the moment. The deer couldn’t flee as fast as usual because of the sand, but thankfully, most of them still managed to hightail it into the water before the spray of copper-coated lead could reach them.
And that’s when I learned that deer can swim. Fast. Before I could mentally process what was happening, their heads had gotten smaller, and the herd—except for the three left bleeding in the sand—was already about a quarter of the way between the shore and the horizon.
No, I thought, but there was no use denying it.
It was the family from my alley.
Surrounded by people in uniform, the shooter was shouting something now about the second amendment, hooved rats, civic duty, community service, how we’d all be thanking him later. One officer tried to talk him into putting his gun down while the others pointed theirs at him. I hurried past the crowd, which was split between watching the scene with the shooter and pressing in on the three victims on the beach. In front of my wounded neighbors, some people took selfies, their faces contorted in ambiguous grimaces like trophy hunters torn between pride and shame.
As I approached, I realized the mother and her boy were no longer moving, but the little girl, though bleeding from her shoulder, was able to rise to her feet. Stomping a hoof and flicking her head, she ignored the cheese puffs and peanuts held out to her in upturned palms as her gaze moved between her loved ones and the horizon. She took several steps toward the water and even submerged her front hooves, pausing to watch the rest of the herd as their heads disappeared, dropping off the edge of the earth. But instead of trying to catch up with them, she returned to the shore and lay down beside her mother and brother, who had probably not gone stiff and cold quite yet.
Having apprehended the shooter and shoved him into the back of a shining SUV that proceeded to speed toward the downtown jail, some of the remaining officers came down to join the crowd on the beach. I thought they’d try to disperse everyone, but instead, they just pushed their way to the front of the group and pulled out their phones. I guess I was only part of the crowd, too, but to take photos and videos of my neighbors in their current state struck me as a grave insult. I wanted to offer some kind of help, but all I could think to do was point to a distant intersection and shout, Oh my god! It’s Taylor Swift! And she has a baby bump! Sweet mother of God, what a day this is! This time, my lips cooperated. After a moment of excited disbelief, a few teens decided to go see for themselves. Everyone else followed.
*
I stayed with the sole survivor, who had lain back down to nuzzle her mother. At what I hoped would feel to her like a safe distance, I sat in the sand, and I waited. The sun went down, the tide started coming in, and by the time the sky was as close to black as it ever gets in this city, the water was washing over the bodies of the deceased. Still, the straggler stayed by their side, wet and cold and shaking. For a while, I hummed a melody, an old lullaby whose words I’d forgotten. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like it calmed her down a little, so I kept on humming until eventually, my initial shyness faded. I even made up some words—something about a place where the leaves are always tender, the berries always ripe. Somewhere not far from here, where you can be with your family forever.
As the sea level rose, I inched my way backward, still singing, still not knowing what I was hoping for exactly, but thinking maybe the warmth of my body would attract the little one back to dry land. Maybe she would come to me, and I could figure out the next step from there. I could try calling the wildlife division of the Humane Society, even though it was after hours and I knew nobody would pick up. Or I could take her to the 24/7 emergency vet, which exists for the sake of livestock and pets, but maybe they’d still be willing to help. Or—
I could simply bring her home. I’ve always been told I’d be a wonderful mother.
I waited and waited, shivering in my summer dress. Her mom and brother were drifting away now, only intermittently visible as they bobbed in the still-rising tide that refused to carry them all the way out to sea.
For a moment then, she looked at me, or perhaps through me, in the direction of the hill where we lived, where we shared our quiet alley, where all the neighbors had apple trees. She took a few hesitant steps in my direction, limping through the low waves that lapped the shore as though no act of senseless violence had occurred there only a few hours earlier. With all the gentleness I could muster, I reached out my hand, almost touching the precious little face.
And that’s when she turned, stumbled into the water, and started swimming.
Kelsey Tribble is a writer, editor, and amateur conservation biologist residing on the West Coast. She remains ever grateful to her mentors and teachers from the English department at Western Washington University, including but not limited to Stefania Heim, Jane Wong, José Roach Orduña, Theresa Warburton, and Dawn Dietrich. Her writing has appeared onstage at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine in Portland and the New Prospect Theatre in Bellingham, Washington. She enjoys making music, experimental short films, and new friends. You can reach her at kelsify@proton.me.
