Not far from She of We there is a garden center that celebrates Christmas in a North Polian way. Among the decorations and the trees and the ciders sits Santa and his reindeer. Maybe, or maybe just antlered deer so common to the area. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is for 30 years parents have brought their children not only to see Santa but to see how he got there, how to feed his team, and how to act around large live animals while those parents picked their trees, selected a few new decorations and spiked their ciders. It was a win, win, win, win.
It was a big win for those deer since the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is also know in our state as antlered deer season. These guys weren’t cavorting in the woods being led to their demise by female deer scents and dodging the ultimate bullet. They had a job. Like us they might not have been wild about their job but it beat being dead.
So that paragraph was all in past tense. Did the garden center close? Nope. Did they lay off Santa and thus Santa had no need for daily transportation? Not that either. Did Santa fall for the TV commercial and trade in his eight tiny reindeer for eight shiny new Mercedes? Uh-uh. PETA (you know them – the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – yeah, right) decided there isn’t enough controversy surrounding Christmas and whether or not to allow crèches where human beings might actually see them and then decided they should, would, and did target this inoffensive family owned garden center as animal haters. You see, the deer were kept behind fences. Sort of keeping them from wandering onto the main highway through that part of town and having to worry now about dodging a Dodge.
PETA won, there are now eight more deer in the woods for the hunters who missed all the others and now Santa has to get to the garden center on public transportation. (He spends all his money giving away toys. He can’t afford a Mercedes!)
Personally, we love our animals. We keep them indoors to protect them from the elements, feed them animal food when they get hungry, and take them to animal doctors when they get sick. And every now and then we like to pretend eight of them actually pull Santa’s sleigh across the world spreading joy where us common people messed up. He seems to be wild about his job and knows darned well it beats being dead.
Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?