Ya know, there are things I didn't know about me till right now. For instance, my feelings about meat. Let me elaborate while taking the long way around the barn. It's deer season, and it's a BIG deal. Hunters scouting out good spots to set a deer stand, sighting in rifles and such, waking at the crack of dawn, showering in de-scenting soap, putting on camo clothes and bright orange, sitting for hours on end in a deer blind or a deer stand, walking for miles trying to find the deer they shot...it goes on! I can understand the excitement....I'm like that with Christmas shopping.
This is the first year I get to be a part of the deer hunting scene. Cowboy isn't a deer hunter. But Rancher and Rancher's friends are. This past weekend, I fixed breakfast for them and sent them on their way....with ziplock baggies for the deer's heart and liver...yeah to eat later....it's a tradition, I just learned. Fortunately I didn't have to be the one to cook up these delicacies. But I did get to sample them. I went up a rung in my own estimation of myself...I am not a sissy...I ate heart and liver from a freshly killed deer. No, not raw...it was cooked and seasoned!! It wasn't like Dances with Wolves where the still-beating heart was cut out of the "tatonka" and eaten like an apple.....yuck!
Rancher shot a doe and it was up to Cowboy to take it to the nearby check station and processor. First thing though was to put a temporary tag on the doe before we loaded her in the truck. I made the mistake of focusing on her face during the tagging...and I heard Bambi's voice saying, "Mother...Mother." **sad face**
Off to the check station/processor...full parking lot, lots of dead deer...I had to ask myself "who have I become?" haha!! I stood inside the office area and took in the sights: beautifully mounted deer heads that were decorated with Christmas ribbons and bells, pictures of local hunters and their prey (deer, turkey, bobcats, snakes, catfish... wow!), fall decorations, signs with handwritten scriptures, local folks who come just to hang out, carts of meat wrapped in white paper, vats of body parts and heads, dead deer waiting to be processed. Cowboy asked me what cuts of meat I wanted.....uhhhhhh, I don't know. The owner gave me suggestions including her favorites. Tenderloins, spicy summer sausage, and other stuff I can't remember. It's all a blur.
So... in a couple weeks, I'll be eating Bambi's mom....and I won't even care because she will be mysteriously disguised in white paper and I won't even think about that "sweet, innocent, harmless, leaf-eating, doe-eyed little deer." (hear that in a Brooklyn accent courtesy of Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny).
As long as it comes to me packaged, I don't care...I'll eat it. Who in the heck am I? Look at my neck...does it look red to you?
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