Baby Things

Wherein Our Heroine Says, "Awwwww...."

Here's a pretty universal conundrum: what is it about baby animals?

As usual, I have a specific impetus for my seeming non-sequitur. We have deer in the forest behind our house. Lots of deer. Lots of trample-on-your-garden, bone-stupid, hosta-eating deer. Many animal-loving gardeners who live in deer country would tell you that they would cheerfully give a deer lead poisoning - preferably with a shotgun. It's hard not to get just a smidgen enraged when some mindless ruminant comes picking her delicate way out of her almost completely edible forest home and eats your carefully-tended border instead.

So, deer: I'm not a fan. Especially since we have just way too many of them back there - due to lack of predators, they are getting overcrowded and inadvertently culled by passing motorists on the local roads. It's not a good scene.

Cut to yesterday. The dog is barking his head off and wagging his tail at the next-door neighbor's back yard. And what do I see? Two fawns, all snub-noses and spotted hides. Cute as the dickens. Melt.

Yet, they're just going to grow up into the mindless ruminants I was just wittering on about. So what gives? What shorts out that logical connection in the brain?

Cuteness. It has to be one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

Posted: Friday - July 16, 2004 at 08:06 AM | |