Blood, guts and Bambi

Guts, gore and innocent blood on his hands.

One shot. And he was dead. A carcass, warm and alone in an empty field.

That's what I witnessed Friday night.

My boyfriend: The Horror Movie

Here I am, La-De-Daa, my boyfriend's great. I call him Cowboy and he helps flooded people. Isn't he swell? Wowie, he sure is cute in that Ace Ventura costume. The world is all unicorns and butterflies and rainbows shooting out of asses.

Gee, do you think Katie might (gasp) be in love?

Wrong.

The other night, Cowboy's dad, Cowboy Sr., shot himself a "five-by-five somma bitch" a.k.a. a boy deer with five points on each antler.

With knife in hand, Cowboy braced himself before the buck's testicles, screamed yee haw, and suddenly skin, head and gizzards were flying wayward across the prairie.

What did I get myself into?

Picture this: I drive to the middle of nowhere and before I even exit the vehicle, Cowboy launches a vest at me.

Cowboy: Put this on.
Me: What? Why? Orange isn't exactly my color...
CB: This is the country, Kate, we don't take chances around here.
Me: But I'm in a driveway, with a horse pasture. Is it even legal to shoot here?
CB: Kinda hard to argue that when you're dead.

Deer gun season opened Friday. In the country, or even semi-cities like Jamestown, schools cancel class and hold parties and beer sales in its honor. Like I said in the blog before, it's like Halloween, but the only appropriate costumes are that of Irish Protestant and Yellowstone National Forest.

This is how it started:

Boom. Smash. Pow.

CB: Here that? Someone's shooting out yonder.
Me: Neat. Can we pet the horsies now?

Suddenly the phone rang and we hopped in the pickup and headed to the even middler of nowhere, to fetch the fallen fawn. Except it wasn't a fawn. The alliteration just worked better. Get over it. 


Anyways, Cowboy and Cowboy Jr. loaded the carcass into the pickup just to unload it again into the gutting pile. Yep. It has a name. The gutting pile.

Wanna help us hold his legs, Kate? Cowboy called.

You've got to be kidding me.

After they'd excavated all the intestines, heart (which Cowboy assured me he'd fry) and liver, the boys REPACKED poor Bambi and took him to the butcher shop.

(If you want pictures of that, I'll send them to you. I don't mind writing words like "testicle" and "ass" but I'm afraid skinless deer might offend some readers. That and if you really want to see bloody Bambi picture, you're a perv, and I don't really want you reading this blog anyway.)

At the butcher shop, the Cowboys hung Bambi BY HIS HIND LEGS and skinned him like I did to the cat in biology class. Except I didn't skin it. My partner did and I just took notes.

I stood outside the butcher shop doorway, taking pictures because I knew I'd need evidence. The FBI readers would SURELY need proof of this one.

You can come inside, Cowboy Sr. said. There's enough room here.

Thank you, but I prefer to remain far away for fear the dead deer's soul will haunt me.

"There's nothing impure we're doing here," Cowboy said, his hands the color of MacBeth. "Where do you think you're meat comes from?"

Uhhh... the grocery store... duh.