by Gwagwagwe
One day, as the gods of this place watched out for the bisons, an offering was presented. We had been traveling the roads in this majestic wilderness, and as we passed the same spot as the day before, we spotted a three-year-old female black-tail. We haven’t begun to hunt animal spirits yet, but that was of little concern. During the previous evening, some car had taken its life, but we knew it as food. Yuck you might say, or isn’t eating road-kill illegal or even dangerous, well maybe it’s both, but those words mean little to us bosons. We laid the deer in the trunk, and held our breath for the 10 miles back to our village. We had discussed this possibility, and had been waiting for chance. This was it, and we took full advantage. After cleaning and butchering this magnificent animal, we stored the meat in the nearby spring pool. Gwagwagwe was challenged to bite the heart, raw and bloody, and he did as the cool river water and blood dripped down his chin, “ deer comes before us, and raven come after, I now feel the fire that burned within this spirit, I am now deer” he said. Each day, for the next five days, we would eat deer. We started with a small amount, just to assess how our bodies would react, and each day we grew stronger. We saw through the eyes of that deer, we smelled with the nose of the deer, we bounced and galloped with the legs of the deer, we lived the life of that deer. We offered the rest of the body, the part we could not consume, to the crayfish spirits that live next to us in the hurdy-gurdy creek, we would have offered it to the land animal spirits, but we wished not to attract the cougars and bears into the village. They of course are welcome; we just choose not to invite them. We would like to thank the evil Ino “ booya” for instructing us on the proper butchering practices; we’d like to thank the deer people for offering one of their own for our food and education. We’d like to thank all the spirits of the six-rivers national forest, for on this day the bisons are leaving this area, but that’s for another story, and until then, keep alive the memory of that black-tail, for she will live within us forever.