I come back to Langhorne each August for a month of family time. Langhorne has my family, food that offers a more robust attack on my colon, and a quiet suburban life. We are a small town tucked into the woods – like every other town in Pennsylvania. We are surrounded by trees, small animals, ticks, and cicadas.

The night I arrived, my sister showed me some pictures from our driveway’s security camera. We are visited nightly by a menagerie of quick moving animals. We get a squirrel and a rabbit. But there are also deer and a fox. A long-tailed little guy running across our porch and towards, no doubt, my dad’s car, which at all times puts off a scent of Tastycakes – a delicacy my dad allows in the car on the way home from any errand.

“There was a bear,” my sister tells me.

“What?”

I have always harbored a secret desire to witness civilization go back to the animals. We took it from them and I can’t imagine it’s something they have let go of quite yet. They probably view us and our cars and lawnmowers and our political choices and wonder what the hell it is we’ve done to the precious environment.

I take three walks a day while I visit home. Considering my raised level of calories, walks help keep me out of a motorized scooter. They are also a way to observe the town and keep me from committing patricide or matricide or any-other-family-icide you’d care to name.

Also, I want to see that bear.

He’s a black bear. I have named him Kevin (for obvious reasons). Once I told my sister and mother that I wish to see this bear, they scoffed and told me he had been relocated.

“They relocated Kevin?”

“Who’s Kevin?”

“Never mind.”

For the first two days, my walks are not fruitful. I see some dogs and birds and neighbors. Everyone says hi and I am confused at first. But aside from small woodland animals and a hairy mailman, there are no other animals. Definitely no bears.

But then, as I passed a tiny patch of woods on the road that would bring me to our street, I noticed movement. Kevin? I thought. No. but it was two deer. One adult, the other young. They were sitting at the edge of the woods and eating some guy’s lawn. I slowed. They looked at me with massive and seemingly trusting eyes, a round, deep black nose popped on the edge of their snouts that would make Rudolf jealous (in the beginning of his song). They chewed grass and did nothing.

I walked away.  

Yesterday, after working out, my sister informed me that I should take a walk to a shower and then use it. I told her I would shower after my walk.

“Cool. Don’t walk near any of our neighbors.”

“Fair enough.”

Maybe, I surmised, if I smell like one of them, Kevin will make himself known. At the same patch of woods, another movement came. The deer again. This time they were much closer, just a few yards away. I stopped. There she was – the adult, Patty (obvious reasons); she was about six or seven feet from me. Flo was not with her now. Patty came even a little closer so that I could take two steps and pet her side if I wanted to try. But something told me not to.

When confronted with an animal I normally don’t see on a daily basis – a deer, a nutria, a beaver, a horse, a cow – I am always amazed by the size and the, well, realness of them. Animals are always larger and more intimidating than you’d think they are. This is probably because when animals (even docile ones) are on TV or movies, they are there as a joke. Or maybe they are anthropomorphized: a talking spider, a pig who herds sheep, an indecipherable duck who wears only the top half of a sailor’s uniform. Media has not prepared us to deal with animals in the quasi-wild.

This is a deer, a symbol of mild euphemism and softness, metaphorically depicting speed, inaction, or a eunuch; a walking pile of steak. And yet, the muscles rippling in its side, its strong legs, its surprising size, all tell me that if I stepped out of line, this animal could knock me into the weekend. I did not touch Patty. She looked at me, sniffed at my shoe and, evidently agreeing with my sister’s assessment of my post-workout aroma, took off across the street.

I spend the night marveled by my experience. Right there – nature! I then remember that on another visit home way back in the 1990s, I walked across the street from my friend Eddie’s house and saw, standing right on our porch, a buck. A huge buck with lots of points on its antlers. Even drunk I knew to avoid this guy. He was less gregarious than Patty and took two giant leaps and was in the woods across the street.

But then it dawned on me: I am king of the deer. This realization was something of a surprise as I had always figured I was Lord of the Hermit Crabs. But you cannot argue with nature.

On my walk this morning I saw Flo and Patty. They were crossing the street to another patch of woods. A driver was coming up the road and I waved with two arms to warn him. He slowed down and let our buddies pass. I smiled in wonder as he drove past me, hoping to engage him in a shared ‘can you believe that?’ moment. But he didn’t smile back. He looked at his watch and made an annoyed face.   

And he’s right. Nothing happened. It wasn’t interesting for him. I’m telling you a (non-)story about a (non-)run-in with a deer. Not Kevin the bear or Terry the bobcat or even Samantha the hawk.

I come home and try to figure out why I’m writing this. Oh, I’m sure there’s something about the circle of life and blah blah blah. But in the end, what I want to say is that if civilization does go back to the animals, then Flo and Patty can have my room. And, if they occasionally had Kevin over for mojitos, that wouldn’t break my heart either.