Call of the Domestic?

A couple of days ago I was sitting at the parsonage typing up emails, thesis stuff, sermon notes and such, when I looked out my window and saw eight deer walking down my street!  I am bringing this to your attention because, honestly, this is not a good thing.  I realise that some folks like that about the 'burbs.  The presence of such beasts let's us feel "a little bit country," like we aren't destorying the environment with our living patterns.  Of course, the reason they are there is precisely because we are.  Their habitat has been drastically cut.  They are hungry.  This means they have to cross busy streets to find food on the town baseball diamonds and hope they can get back.  The parsonage, along with five other houses, is on a small island.  The Charles is on three sides and there is a small canal that completes the moat effect.  It's not much, but as a deer it is hard to get off without endangering yourself.

I grew up in the country--in Maine in fact.  Growing up people would ask me if I had ever seen a moose or a bear.  Of course I had!  However, I have seen a great deal of wildlife out on the roads down here and in the yards of people in Burbania.  I see more more of some species than I ever saw growing up.  Not bears, of course, because we would have the police shoot them, but deer certainly, foxes, too.  Again, it isn't that there are more, just that we have taken away their space.

I remember going to visit my wife's parents in suburban New Jersey and seeing literally scores of dead deer by the side of the road.  Back then I wondered if perhaps if the deer weren't actually the ones out of place.  I can't help but wonder that today, too.