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Charlotte harasses an elderly doe
Wednesday, October 15 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
I wasn't especially productive at work today, but by the standards of this workplace, it wasn't too bad. I was feeling less like I was about to be fired, partly because I had a few positive exchanges with a colleague who had seemed to be irritated with me. And the guys in the lunchroom court are genuinely warm. I seem to have recently turned the young IT guy on to ghost pepper hot sauce, and the king of the lunchroom court now always seems delighted to see me. He, I, and the other senior software developer in the court all bonded today over the idea of driving cars into the ground instead of constantly getting new ones (though the others talked about payments as though that is the normal way to finance a car, something I vehemently disagree with).
A new refrigerator would be delivered at the cabin tomorrow, and the plan was for me to be there when that happened. In other workplaces, I might've tried to work remotely. But I've accumulated sick days that I would lose if I were to be fired, so I thought I'd burn one of those. Aside from the couple hours I took off to see the eye doctor, it would be my first request for paid time off.
So when I got home from work today, I packed up the car and then took Charlotte and Neville for a short walk up the Farm Road and into the forest to its west just so they'd be all peed and pooped out before our two hour drive. Charlotte, unlike Neville, found something to do and didn't return in a timely manner from the walk. So I looked at her tracker data to see where she was. She was in the forest a quarter mile or so north up Dug Hill Road, still on our side of the road across the house that used to be a meat locker occupied by Tommy, the guy who mountain bikes in the forest. Knowing Charlotte was in the area, I started calling for her, which brought Tommy out. He said a dog had been barking, and sure enough I could hear her piercing utterances. Tommy directed me to one of his trails (which I already knew about) and I ran towards the barking. As I grew close to where it was, I could see a bright patch of white. As I drew closer, I could see this was the tail end of an adult female deer (that is, a doe) that Charlotte was barking at. What was wrong with this deer that she couldn't run away? Why had she given up on running to just stare Charlotte down? (She was lucky in this case, because Charlotte really is all bark and no bite.) By this point I was being quiet, the tactic I use when trying to get the dogs away from bears, in hopes the deer wouldn't run. Because if she ran, Charlotte would run after her, and there would be no way for me to keep up. But eventually the deer decided I was too close and did run, though not very well. She seemed uncoordinated and couldn't go far before needing to stop. But she didn't seem injured. Maybe she was senile or suffering from some sort of poisoning. In any case, every time she ran, Charlotte ran after her. I yelled "NO!" which seemed to actually slow her down a bit, though it's hard for dogs as poorly trained as ours are to prioritize human commands over their own instincts. Somehow in all this, I managed to get between Charlotte and the deer and the deer managed to slip away, leaving just me and Charlotte. I thought things would go easier after that, because Charlotte and me together in the forest is a common thing. But she wouldn't let me near her and she refused to follow me. I tried to sneak up and grab her, and her response was to melt away into the forest. I feared she'd go right back to harassing that poor traumatized deer, but what could I do? I decided to return to Dug Hill Road and drive back home. The whole time I was feeling what I felt about Charlotte two years ago when we first got her and she refused to go into our house: "I hate this dog!"
When I got back to the house, I shouted into the forest for Charlotte, assuming she was still making her way back home. But instead she came out through the pet door. She'd made it home well before I had. Neville was already in the car, so I began my drive up to the Adirondacks.
I stopped as usual for provisions at the Hannaford in Cairo, getting most of the usual things, includings (since I eat so much of it) three loaves of bread. I also got a lot of pasta and several kind of chips, salsa, and guacamole. I also got a 12 pack of strong beer, which I talked about with the cashier as she rang me up. She had a light accent from some Latin American country and admitted that she liked hazy IPAs.
On the drive from there, I kept finding myself behind various pickup trucks, and the pattern was always that they drove unnecessarily slowly. It had me wondering if people (men, usually) in pickup trucks really want to be going to the things they are driving towards. Or do they just drive around to be seen in the (to me, ho-hum) trucks that they are making huge payments on every month? I've used pickups and even briefly owned a small Toyota pickup, and I never drove the way pickup truck drivers typically do. But it's rare for me to get behind a pickup truck and not fucking hate the driver. Most other vehicles, by contrast, do not infuriate me. Even huge tractor-trailer trucks seem more intent on getting to their destination than pickups do.
It was cool outside the cabin, but temperatures inside were still a relatively balmy 57 degrees. I started a fire that never really caught and began drinking booze like I always do. I was a little concerned about drinking too much because I'd taken pseudoephedrine earlier today. So I managed to wind down my drinking before getting too drunk.
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