I live in a rural area where road kill is a gruesome common sight. Oddly enough a number of these animals don’t look dead at first glance with the trauma from the accident being hidden from a distance. Rather they seem to be in a state of rest. Such was the case with a deer I spotted last week at the side of the road. I think it must have been hit on the far side of a curve, made it off the road, and fallen dead in front of an abandoned farm house. The tree it was lying under sported an odd sort of decorative item. It wasn’t exactly a sculpture or a mobile but an item made from what seemed to be found items that resembled a cross between both. The juxtaposition of the dead deer “reclining” at the base of the tree, underneath the metal construction, struck me as something noteworthy and storied. So much so that I ended up recreating the scene in a drawing (I know it’s a bit creepy). I’m not sure of a clearer way to describe it other than to say that I perceived a visual weight created through the pose, the tree, and the swinging metal above. Sometimes it’s hard not to read a mythos into the countryside and the shadows that line the lane ways.
