The Buck Stops Here - Well, There, Actually

I live in Boulder, Colorado. It is a fairly affluent city with a strangely diverse population. It was once featured on the Today Show as having the largest cross-section of religions of any other city in the country. This is a place of big money living side-by-side with New Age granola types. On Thursday evenings a group of hundreds get together to ride their bicycles all over the city - just because it is Thursday. I live in a trailer park, so obviously, I am not on the money side of things, as to the other side - you be the judge. My neighbors consist of an astrologer, three massage therapists, a Rolfer, a junk dealer, a recycled building materials dealer, and a young woman creating her own business of crocheted fashions. The first time I saw one of my neighbors she was jogging past dressed as a butterfly.

Our "trailer" park, or, more politically correctly, mobile home community, is not stereotypical of the "trailer park" of red neck comedians, though there is plenty of comedy around here.

We live with a fairly wide range of wildlife passing through. Fox, deer, snakes, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, skunks. . . Around here it really is a wild life. . .

One fine autumn day I was out in my yard raking leaves. I looked up with a doe came out from between two of the homes across the street. She turned and trotted down the street and then went between two more of the homes. Nothing unusual there. A moment later a huge buck came out from between the same first two houses as the doe. He looked around and did not see her, apparently his sworn lady love. On the other hand, he did see me and I didn't quite measure up. Thus, really ticked off, the horny beast lowered his antlers and started to rush my direction. I froze. What to do? I was too far from the house to make a run for it. I had my rake, but compared to those antlers I may as well have been holding a toothpick. I wondered briefly what impalement would feel like.

At the last moment, or maybe the moment before that, he caught the scent of his lady love, raised his head and trotted happily and lustily after her. I dropped to the ground and tried to get my heart and lungs working again. Not a hole in my person, other than those that are meant to be there.

Most of my wildlife encounters have not been quite so dramatic, but they are plenty. This may be a city, but we are just barely downstream from the whole Rocky Mountain Range. It is probably only a matter of time before I am faced with a bear - or worse.