I had no plans this Easter except to read a few poems, do some stone work in the yard, and have pork chops with my wife. I ended up going to a church – long enough to haul a deer carcass away from its steps and into the woods behind it.

It started last weekend on Palm Sunday. A deer had been hit and was lying dead near the road in front of the historic church next to my house. I know the church has a small congregation of long-time residents, and figured one of them would take it on himself  to persuade the town to send a truck out. Certainly before their marquee weekend.

Notre Dame burned. Good Friday came. The deer was still lying there. I asked a neighbor, who told me I could try calling the town, but by Friday on a holiday weekend they would probably give me a runaround.

#13.

I don’t know about the Methodists, but the Catholic churches I grew up in were all adorned with the Stations of the Cross: fourteen plaques of sometimes graphic violence for the semi-literate, showing the murder that’s a part of our central mythology. One that always got me was Number 13: “Jesus is taken down from the cross,” or sometimes, “Jesus is laid in his mother’s arms.”

It always shows a lifeless Christ, heavy in the arms of someone. Its point seems to be, He isn’t merely dead, he’s really quite sincerely dead.

This occurred to me on Easter morning. I slept late – I’d been up late. As faithful readers know, I’ve been too busy to blog lately. The Sunday service next door was already finished. I thought of the limp and bloody body of Christ when I put my garden gloves on and walked around the church to see the deer. Scavengers had chewed through her hind leg, and a wild tomcat was helping himself when I got there. Her eyes had already been eaten out, but she was otherwise intact.

A woman I met at an antique stand this week told me a story about a fawn she found in her yard that was trying to avoid being eaten by a fisher. I’ve never seen a fisher that I know of,  but they’re a feisty species of wild cat that chicken and pet-owners fear.

I have nothing against fishers and suppose one is entitled to eat a fawn if they can find one. Likewise I had nothing against this cat, nor the coyotes and vultures who would feed on this deer – and who could do so more safely away from the road. So I grabbed her by her back hooves and pulled her many yards behind the church’s shed, to a clearing in the woods.

It was odd feeling the weight of the deer’s body resisting my pull at first – and feeling the reverberating friction of its bumping against tree roots – a final scratch of its neck. Within a minute I got used to it. Some animals you’ll never touch alive. Only when they’re dead do you feel how soft their fur is.

Judging by the amount of deer droppings in the clearing, it was a place she was used to feeding, and now she’s being fed on there. Later we brought her forsythia branches and incense and wished her a peaceful rest.

Deer are regarded as a nuisance in the country. They eat gardens and make driving slower at night. Such peaceful creatures though! We vowed that no matter how long we live here we we would try to keep regarding them as good neighbors, friends even.