Serendipitet
Wislawa Szymborska

Fair Game

                         LoopyLolly: Deer in Smoking Jacket

Europe no longer holds large wild animals that exist beyond the reach of our good, or bad, intentions. Only small fry escape our surveillance and may, in certain spots, live in genuine freedom. Larger species may have the impression that they live as they please, but in reality they’re subject to remote-control cultivation. If we set to work with determination and energy, we could exterminate every large species in two or three years, or even in five with the active assistance of our bureaucrats. No one wants this, naturally. While reading Stanislaw Dziegielewski’s book [The Deer], which exhaustively covers everything concerning deer in the past, present, and future, I reached the conclusion that this beautiful animal will survive in Europe as long as there are hunters. Hunters won’t allow this animal to die out, since anyone who likes hunting has to have something to hunt. And so the hunter flips through the pages of this book in a double role: he is both destroyer and protector, both the exterminating angel and the guardian angel at once. He holds a gun in his right hand while blowing a kiss with his left. The most frequently used term in this book, aside from “deer” and “antlers” is probably “prophylactic shooting”. Prophylactic shooting improves the species since it eliminates clearly inferior specimens. Prophylactic shooting pays heed to the desired ratio of male to female. Prophylactic shooting regulates the distribution of game, so the animals can thrive without excessive destruction of forest and field. Prophylactic shooting even improves the deer’s beauty, hindering the propagation of specimens whose horns grow this way and not that. In short, prophylactic shooting acts in various ways for the deer’s own good. It’s just a shame that they don’t know it.

About The Deer by Stanislaw Dziegielewski
Non-required reading: Prose Pieces
Translated by Clare Cavanagh