‘Imagine the frustration of the children who came of age near ‘Bellamy Forest,’ where the animals grow second heads and drop them like a hats in the wind. It must have been difficult, for that first batch, to describe these deliberate dismemberments and be chided for telling stories.’
Hector and I rent a deer stand for an evening in ‘Bellamy Forest.’ The agreement suggests that sleeping in the stand is against regulations, though, staking out the forest late into the night is just fine and I doubt the people in charge make a habit of wandering around and scaring off game. I take my chances and roll out a sleeping bag, knowing I’ll fall asleep at some point whether it’s intentional or not. Once I’ve blocked out the spaces in the walls where Hector might blindly wander off the tree, I retrieve an old pair of binoculars and settle myself into a meditative quiet.
I’ve seen pictures of the ‘Bellamy Forest’ animals and don’t exactly savor seeing them in life. It isn’t just spare heads they grow, though it’s the most common mutation among deer. The squirrels and raccoons slide out of redundant skins or run off without their tails. The rabbits grow extra feet, sometimes looking like furry little centipedes. Something in the biology of Bellamy animals has come to a decision regarding what part of the animal it is that draws hunters to it and the animals have evolved to provide it non-fatally. When a Bellamy deer is startled it drops an extraneous head, a glassy-eyed husk, and it bolts off in the opposite direction. Timed correctly, a gun shot will trigger this effect in a gathered herd, leaving a field of hollow relics.
But that would be quite the faux pas.
Evolution got it about half right. I don’t own a hunting license and don’t make a habit of keeping up with the hobby, but I know that Bellamy Forest has only become more of a destination, now. A hunter can prove their worth, here, by executing a kill before the animal has time to drop whatever extra part it grows. A two-headed deer graced the lobby of the lodge where I rented my ticket, for instance, and the placard nearby pointed out the seamless connection of the second head- a perfect Bellamy kill.
That’s what nature has a hard time anticipating. It understands killing for the sake of something, even for the sake of something as abstract as a trophy, but sometimes we kill for the sake of the kill and there’s no outmaneuvering that.
Rumor has it that the ‘Bellamy Forest’ mutation is already dying out, not for overhunting, given that licenses are tightly controlled, but because the quick-trigger evolution of the place has seemingly grasped its failure and gone back to the drawing board. The vestigial pieces of newborns have become wilted, half-formed, and much less likely to drop. The sheer ugliness of the new creatures has already dented hunting business which is why I slid so easily into a last-minute stand rental.
Around dusk a two-headed deer sidles into the clearing below Hector and I. The second head is unmoving, its mouth slightly open and its eyes gaping wide. It looks exactly like the sort of think one might mount over a hearth, a perfect, if naïve, negotiation on the part of nature. When Hector knocks over my bag (surreptitiously digging for carrots) the clattering startles the deer and the second head slips off into the grass. I just catch the bare patch of hide on the animal as it bounds away.
Hector, behind me, has settled into a corner with his treat. I wonder if he knows he’s done the deer a favor or if he was just working under the same impulse that drives the hunters to stalk their prey.
-traveler
