"The buck hangs here"

Back when Andrew shot that buck, I had no idea the kinds of conversations it would bring about in our family. He decided to get it mounted for our wall which means that he had to pick it up from the butcher and take it to the taxidermy place (which he did with the kids). The other day when I was picking up the meat Peter yelled at me from the back seat, "This is NOT the way Daddy drove when we came to pick up that deer face!!" Yesterday he was convinced that the puddle (snow melt) in the doorway to the butchers was deer pee because they have fake tracks leading up to the door. He told Ella, "I don't know why they let that deer in here and he even peed on the floor!" I told him it was melted snow, and the only deer going in there were dead. That got me no where. This is only the beginning.

I will be staring at that buck for years to come and my kids will too. 

The night it was shot, Andrew got home really late and pulled in with that dead animal on a tarp in the trunk of his....'95 Camry. I looked at the clock, it was 11pm. There was no one to call to help him hang it in the garage and I knew for sure this was not a one man job. Then my inner battle began. "Do I ignore this and let him think I'm in bed? Do I call him and ask 'if' he needs my help? Do I bite the bullet and just get out there like a nice wife?" Decision: I put on my Danskos and my coat (not meant for getting bloody, none of my coats are actually) and walked out by the garage. I asked him, "So how does this work?" At some point he had rigged up and welded a metal triangle together for hanging deer up. The only thing I've ever rigged up to hang things on, now holds my earrings. I was not prepared for this. He sliced the back of the knees and said "we" had to get the hind legs to hang up on the sides of the metal triangle. Keep in mind, I was not really willing to touch that animal and it was VERY heavy. It smelled terrible and the blood that was dripping near my children's bicycles was really grossing me out. Using some wire, some pliers, me, and his manly strength, that deer hung upside down by midnight. GO US! Then I asked him, "What now?" "Well it will be rigor-mortis in that position by morning, so I might have to break the legs to get it in my car." OH MY WORD. SICK. Andrew's a problem solver, and he usually fixing broken bones, not breaking them on purpose, so lucky for him he found a friend with a truck he could borrow. It all worked out in the end and I am a little more backwoods for the experience.