\n<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the beauty of Hollywood<\/a>. We live at a comfortable remove from life and death, i.e., from reality, and we like it that way.<\/p>\n I saw them shortly after moving in. Four deer prancing across the hillside. I was amazed\u2014not only because this was LA, but because I\u2019d been enchanted by deer ever since seeing Bambi<\/em> at six years old.<\/p>\n As they are for all Americans, Disney<\/a> movies were the foundational cinematic experience of my childhood. Which is to say they completely traumatized me. They were supposed to teach us about life and death. Instead, Bambi<\/em> taught me that my mother was going to be taken from me at any moment, and I would be left orphaned, trying to survive on magical thinking alone. I was inconsolable for weeks. My mother had to bring me to a hypnotist to erase my newfound knowledge of the reality of life. This is possibly why my takeaway from Bambi<\/em> was not about the triumph of nature and the circle of life but how deer are the \u00adsweetest, cutest, most innocent creatures ever to exist.<\/p>\n The deer surfaced once a month, and when they did I\u2019d rush to the windows and watch for endless stretches of time. Sometimes, whole afternoons went by where I did nothing but look at deer. Occasionally, I\u2019d post a video to Instagram<\/a>, which is how I discovered what people think about deer.<\/p>\n \u201cVermin,\u201d they replied, as if deer weren\u2019t little ballerinas in animal form! \u201cSay goodbye to your flower garden.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t care. I loved them and felt we understood each other. They were scared and I was also scared. But it wasn\u2019t enough just to love them. I needed them to love me.<\/em> I looked for ways to encourage them to spend more<\/em> time at my house. I wanted them to know that unlike the movie star, who had surely given them some form of ancestral trauma, I would never kill their mother. I, too, was a vulnerable herbivore, basically, with the exception of fish and chicken and red meat, if I\u2019m on my period.<\/p>\n The challenge of trying to gain their affection was similar to my romantic life. The deer is like the avoidant man in that way: Don\u2019t make any sudden movements, pretend I don\u2019t care, avoid direct eye contact so as not to trigger their fight-or-flight response, and never ever<\/em> make the first move.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n