‘Birthday wishes’ to Fran got handled thanks to an early morning reminder from reader Sid.  Whew!  Thanks, buddy.

Town day was postponed.  Blowing 25 with gusts.  We had whitecaps and sizeable waves.  Normally this wouldn’t deter us but lacking the big boat (motor dead) meant reliance on Sal’s boat, the equivalent of a Miata.  Imagery: imagine a large helping of mashed potatoes heaped on a plain white saucer, maybe with two bits of broccoli on the side………..that’s me sitting in her little boat and the little broccoli bits are her and her outboard motor.  Not a seaworthy picture, really, is it?

So, we’ll go another day.

Dogs are starting to bug me again.  I suppose I should blame the local otter – the dog perfume dispenser. Nothing seems to please the dogs more than a few rolls in fresh Otter poop.  Then they come in and sit at my feet in front of the woodstove.  “They love you, sweetie” says Sal.  I know it is silly of me, but I am not keen on steaming dogs reeking of Otter poop and, strangely, I don’t care if it is a sign of affection.  I am not impressed.

Our neighbour Judith is the ‘go-to’ dog sitter for us.  The dogs (especially Fiddich) really do love her.  And it seems mutual (but she won’t take them permanently no matter how much money I offer).  Judith dropped by the other day with fresh deer offal and bones.  For the dogs.  There was about 25 pounds of still-meaty bones, spines, noses and other organ meats and the dogs have taken to it like wolves.  It’s a good thing.  I think.

It is also interesting to realize how ‘citified’ I still am.  I am shocked at all the deer blood.  I know that blood is involved in all the meats we eat.  I am not quite that insulated.  But, when you buy a steak from Save-on, they have taken special care not to have the item retain any sense of the ‘real-life/real-butchering/real-death’ process as possible.  Wouldn’t want the customers to really know what they are part of, I suppose.  A Save-on steak has no blood. Neither does a chicken, a piece of swine or a lamb.  They are clean, dry and you can put one on your sore, recently punched, black eye if you need to without worry of staining your clothes with bloody evidence.  Our meat has been sanitized. 

Not so the local slaughter.  Of course, the local hunter hangs and bleeds his dead ruminant and all that but the pieces that are hacked off willy nilly (so to speak) are not wiped 100% clean and wrapped in plastic with a styrofoam tray as background.  Get a deer roast from a local and you get a brown bag with a bloody lump in it.  Feels pretty primal.  And it is.

I am disinclined to becoming vegetarian.  I tried it once and it didn’t work.  But I must admit that more people would consider it if the meat they bought was handed out like the deer offal was.  Makes it pretty real.  You get closer to the deer, closer to the dogs and somehow closer to everything. 

It’s bloody profound is what it is.