Reindeer Games
It’s Wednesday, prostate and I’ve decided to update on Wednesdays from now on, site whether I want to or not.
And since it is the also the day after Christmas, and I have no other ideas running around in my head, I’m going to relate the story that I have taken to calling “Worst Christmas Ever”.
For a while I worked with a soldier, who I will refer to as PFC Kringle. He was always a little “off” (And yes I realize that means something different when I say it.) Shortly before the holidays one year he told me the following story from his childhood.
His step-father was a ranger. The kind that works in a national park. Not the kind that stormed the beaches of Normandy. One of the tasks his step-father had to take care of was road kill.
Well one morning, a few days before Christmas Eve, when PFC Kringle was a little boy, his step-father came across a small deer that had been run over by a car. Instead of doing, well, whatever the heck it is that park rangers normally do with a dead deer, he came up with a clever idea.
(Side note: What the heck do they do with dead deer? Is there a road kill graveyard somewhere? Do they use the meat to feed the homeless or something? Perhaps there is a special deer furnace for burning them? The furnace seems the most likely, but it does seem like a bizarre and somewhat creepy career choice.)
So he brought the deer home, and made an improvised harness for it out of some leather straps.
Then he spent all Christmas Eve yelling about how much he hated Santa Claus. “That red-suited bastard had better not show his face around here this year! If he does, I’ll kill him and all those darn reindeer.”
Eventually PFC Kringle and his little brother were sent to bed. And that’s when daddy-dearest hauled the deer up onto the roof, and attached one end of his new dead deer harness to the chimney. He then pushed the deer off of the roof. There was now a dead deer in a harness, swinging past his children’s window.
Next he went down to the yard, and fired a shotgun into the ground several times, while yelling, “I got him! I got him!”
The kids, of course, open the curtains just in time to see Rudolf go sailing past.
So at this point the unit decided that a little off or not he was remarkably well-adjusted, all things considered.
Follow
December 27th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Wow…that’s…just so wrong.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 5:48 am
[…] hburgnews wrote an interesting post today on Reindeer GamesHere’s a quick excerptIt’s Wednesday, and I’ve decided to update on Wednesdays from now on … was now a dead deer in a harness, swinging past his children’s… […]
December 27th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I’ve had my dad, a 25 year Navy vet, run into my room during high school when I was late with a bucket of ice water and dump it on me and flip the lights on and off yelling for me to get my f-ing ass up and grab my socks! I thought that was traumatic, but Jesus! Isn’t that how military base sniper incidents start?
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 6:54 am
With a childhood like that he must have had an interesting natural ability for the inevitable practical jokes.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Wow, that would indeed put a few sharp bends in a tender young psyche. My old man’s Christmas pranks seem relatively mild now. Incidentally, what normally happens with roadkilled deer, if it’s fresh and not too mushy, is that it gets carved up into venison and distributed to families who could use a little extra food on the table. Too old, or too mashed, and it goes in a garbage incinerator.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
That sounds like something my dad would find funny. He propbably wouldn’t actually do it, but he would find it utterly hilarious.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Maybe that is what is supposed to happen, but here in Northern California CalTrans (the state road guys) has been finding convenient, out of the way ravines on roadsides and dropping them off there. Imagine being some guy exploring foothills and coming across a few hundred corpses of all types and states of decay (it’s happened a couple of times). Talk about bad for the psyche!
Reply
Snyarhedir reply on January 27th, 2011 7:46 pm:
That kind of reminds me of the 2005 movie House Of Wax (which I saw on You Tube).
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
That’s pretty damn creepy. I had a friend whose father did something like that with one of those Christmas light-up reindeer sets. Of course he just pushed it off the roof, not let it hang, since one good look would show that the deer and the sleigh were fake. And it was in the city, so you couldn’t fire off a shotgun without being arrested, so he claimed that Santa was flying drunk. But same general principle, just more easily repeatable in the modern day. I wonder if I’d be a terrible father. Strangely enough, the guy still loves Christmas; one of those twelve-foot-tree, Christmas-lights-visible-from-space types.
As for the roadkill, well, I don’t know about everywhere, but I do know that in more urban areas around here it’s just carted out to a specific area of the city dump. I’ve heard stories that small zoos in less urban areas will make deals with the local animal control for the meat, at least when it’s in decent shape, and I’ve also heard stories of it being given out to the poor or even sold to disreputable butchers, but I’m not entirely sure I believe all that. The meat’s rare too “fresh,” and the sort of damage that’d kill the deer often damages the sort of meat you’d want to eat. I don’t know, though.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
That isn’t something that I could make myself do to kids, but I would definitely pull on some of my friends if I could.
Reply
December 27th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Incidentally, Skippy, I would think it was wonderful if you posted at least once a week. I love the way you think, and I love the way you write.
Reply
December 28th, 2007 at 9:38 am
As a Psyoper (on my 3rd year) in 6th BN, I find this site, and your experiences, to be extremely comforting: at least future humor is transformed from present boredom. Just found your site today (funny how much surfing is done on deployment–thank God I have internet), and I’m already a huge fan. BTW, what was wrong with using “Get over it already”?
Reply
December 28th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I could understand being “off” after that…
They probably take the dead reindeer to the dump as #8 said or taken to a rendering plant as they do near where I live to make glue and cosmetics.
Reply
December 29th, 2007 at 2:47 am
LOL, that is literally all I can think of at this point, is LOL!
You should write for a newspaper in the humor column or editorials!
Reply
December 29th, 2007 at 6:13 am
whatever you did….I sure as hell hope you didnt call PETA on him….
that is sick…and quite hilarious
Reply
December 29th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Why was he a 37F, he would have fit in just fine with the Combat Engineers.
Reply
December 31st, 2007 at 10:16 am
Wow, well, adjusted? Huh! Sounds like the Army was nothing new to him. It also reminds me of this clip I saw on youtube where two parents sneak upstairs with a chainsaw and scare the bejesus out of their two sons, who look to be 6 and 12 years old, after they watched a horror film. Man, it is hillarious!!! It kinda reminds me when I first saw “Exorcism” when I was 7. Except my parents were not sadisic enough to capitalize on my paranoia.
Reply
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
#16’s comment reminds me of when my younger brother saw Stephen King’s “IT”. We had just gone to the circus and bought some Clown masks. My older brother and i would jump from behind furniture or wake him in the middle of the night and scare him silly. He’s now 26 and still scared of clowns.
Reply
January 6th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I don’t know about everywhere, but in Alaska, they have a “road kill list” that you can sign up on. When they find fresh road kill, they call the first person on the list to come get the corpse–if that person can’t get out to do it, they go down the list until someone comes to collect the animal.
Of course, in Alaska, it’s easy to get to the road kills right away, because animal vs. car usually involves a tow truck. (I once saw a mid-sized car totaled by a baby moose. Yes, a baby.)
Reply
January 7th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Man… I’ve known people like that in SCA, or at least heard about them… don’t think they did stuff like that to their own kids though.
And please, don’t update on Wednesday regardless of whether you think you have something good. Forcing creative work ALWAYS results in absolute drivel.
Reply
January 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I know in many cases roadkill=>rendering plant=>dogfood
Reply
Snyarhedir reply on January 27th, 2011 7:57 pm:
*laughing audibly*
Well, that certainly got the most laughs out of me on this one so far.
Reply
January 11th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Wow, that beats mine where Mom hid a present of mine in the old box freezer in the garage. Apparently she left the lid open, and a stray cat got in (we lived next to a wheatfield – lots of stray cats looking for mice) and the lid shut on him, and he asphyxiated. Xmas morning comes, and I’m told to go look in the freezer, and what do I see? A dead cat on top of a present. I looked at mom and told her, “You got me a cat-sickle for Xmas, and it’s my favorite flavor, tabby!” Part of Xmas was scraping the cat off the presents and burying him in the wheatfield (after digging through a foot of snow and a couple feet of frozen soil).
Reply
January 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
When my sister was about 6 or so, my dad and I told her that we were going to shoot down Santa on Christmas. If that trauma wasn’t enough for her fragile little heart, Dad made a special addition to the “traditional” Christmas dinner…he and I had T-bone steak and mashed potatoes containing red food coloring. I told my sister that we were having Reindeer steak and Fat Boy pudding. She’s still not right.
Reply
Snyarhedir reply on January 27th, 2011 8:05 pm:
You are–or at the very least were–a horrible person.
Reply
January 11th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
ummm what to say but..Oh..my..god..i couldn’t stop laughing!
Reply
January 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
WTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!That is just messed up. As I would say, his cereal has gone soggy. The dad I mean. But, still WTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, the “H” stands for Hell/Heck/someotherwierdwordthatstartswith”H” whichever you prefer.
Reply
April 4th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I know how he feels. 25 and still can’t stand seeing clowns.
Reply
January 27th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
That is like an urban legend, only without the urban part.
Reply
March 18th, 2016 at 11:35 pm
Other deals can final the calendar month that you will be in.
Reply
December 5th, 2016 at 11:07 pm
Don’t buy each product because you transpire
possess a promotion for.
Reply