BY HARRY WEEKES<\/p>\n
In August, before school starts, a part of my daily routine is to return home after work and take a cookie walk. Just as it sounds, this is when I take a cookie on a walk. As the video I sent to my family said, \u201cOnly one of us comes back.\u201d
\nSo, I drove to the house, went inside, put my stuff away, and decided between an oatmeal raisin and an almond chocolate chip cookie. I went almond chocolate chip, put my shoes on, and headed down the driveway.
\nThis is the driveway I came up not five minutes before. It was broad daylight. As my focus turned from the cookie to the road in front of me, drawn by a shape out of place, I had one of those moments where you try to process something that is entirely obvious, but so unusual that you can almost feel your brain working to make sense of it.
\nI slowed to a stop. A dead deer lay in the road.
\nOK, not entirely in the road. The deer\u2019s head and neck were stretched out across the road, and the rest of its body hung on the side of the driveway in the sage.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s a deer,\u201d one part of my mind said.
\nAnother part responded, \u201cYeah, but what is it doing in the road? And how did it get there?\u201d
\nCurious, I started walking slowly toward it. Then, I did what I do when I am trying to get something\u2019s attention \u2014 I whistled, gently and quietly.
\nThe deer went from totally dead to very much alive, and shot up the hillside in several snappy, explosive bounds before turning around and looking back at me on the road.
\n\u201cWhat the\u2026.\u201d is what I managed to direct its way. \u201cYou were napping?\u201d
\nOf course, the Internet is littered with photos of deer napping. Most of these are fawns, or other images of deer in little forest glens, or tall grass. Some of the photos are at night, taken with deer cams; others look to be from seasoned professionals who found the deer in various natural hideaways.
\nNone of them was of a deer half on and half off of a driveway. Nor did I get any sense that the Internet deer had just fallen asleep.
\nNeedless to say, I have some questions. How long does a deer usually sleep? Was this deer intentionally napping, or did it have some condition, like deer narcolepsy, where it was suddenly overcome by unconsciousness? What physiological mechanism enables something to go from totally prone and asleep to completely alert and running in a millisecond? What was the deer thinking? Was there something like, \u201cOK, he\u2019s home. Now\u2019s a good time for a quick nap.\u201d
\nI am someone who can fall asleep almost anywhere and anytime. There are pictures of me lying on the kitchen floor, or sleeping next to the threshold of a door, or on the deck of a sailboat. A favorite picture I have referenced before is of me out cold on a carpet, dressed in a sailor suit.
\nMy mom said this is where they found me during my third birthday party.
\nThere is something I am working to process about this encounter, something related to the familiar in unfamiliar circumstances. That mental struggling I do when I encounter someone I know, but in a totally different environment. Or, in this case, something doing something really common, but never commonly encountered.
\nIt is either the start of a long story or the beginning of a short poem \u2014 \u201cSo much depends on the deer napping on the driveway.\u201d Regardless, like all stories, it leaves me curious to know just a little bit more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY HARRY WEEKES In August, before school starts, a part of my daily routine is to return home after work and take a cookie walk. Just as it sounds, this is when I take a cookie on a walk. As the video I sent to my family said, \u201cOnly one of us comes back.\u201d So, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-science-place"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20240,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions\/20240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}