The Death of a Deer

"I am over the creepy behaviour at this point."

Update, 12pm PT: This stuff is fascinating - and for the record you are definitely OK to disagree with me on any of this in the comments. This community rules, and you’re respectful and great even when disagreeing.

With that said — this email just landed in my inbox from a Webworm subscriber who has never written to me before.

I checked, and they just cancelled their Webworm subscription (that’s OK, you can anytime). I checked their location:

If you want to take Chad’s place, feel free:

David.

---

Hi,

I was walking through my suburban neighborhood last week when I saw her.

It was a pretty normal morning. I walked past the same dog staring out at me from behind a fence, the old lady picking grapefruit from her tree, the cars racing down that certain street so they can avoid the traffic lights and make it to their destination five miserable seconds earlier.

And then I saw a shape in the bushes by the roadside that I didn’t understand. At first it was the shape of a giant sleeping dog, then it was the dead husk of a palm tree, and then it snapped into focus of what it was: A dead deer.

I stopped and looked, trying to figure out what was going on. The top of the deer was perfect. Its neck, its head, its eyes — it could have been staring at me from a clearing in the woods, perfectly alive.

The bottom was a different story. I’d thought it was a husk of a palm tree because the deer’s torso had been completely hollowed out. The body cavity was devoid of nearly everything; the legs below were set at odd angles that made your brain skip as if looking at an optical illusion.

Two things struck me. First — the central question: What had happened to this deer.

I felt I understood the first part of the answer. On the other side of the road was Griffith Park, a giant sprawling area of natural beauty full of squirrels and snakes, coyotes and deer. In an ill-conceived move, one of those deer had launched itself onto a road that never used to be there when the animal’s ancestors roamed this land. It was hit and it went flying and it landed, somewhere. I like to think it died quickly.

I don’t really care about the car.

What happened next was a mystery. At first I wondered if crows and coyotes had had their fill overnight. But I’d grown up with hunters in my family, and this was clean and precise. There were no pecks or bites. No jagged edges. For all the strange angles of the limbs and the neck, this was smooth. And for this, I did not have an answer.

The second thing that struck me was that it was beautiful. Truly beautiful.

Yes, it was shocking — but underneath that shock was the realisation that this is all of us. Beautiful and smooth and full of wonder, and somehow paradoxically tied to a body that’s a prison until it’s not. A smooth pelt and doughy eyes betraying the fact that underneath it’s all sinew and fat, bone and blood.

Here was life as it truly is: Beautifully full and perfect, and a ticking time bomb.

So later that day, when the light was less harsh, I returned and took a photo. Someone had placed some foliage and dead leaves in the body cavity, perhaps some form of IRL censorship. I’m usually annoyed at humans placing their mark on nature, but that ship had already sailed. Deer, meet car. Also, in this case, this unnatural element somehow added to the scene — instantly making me think of Alex Garland’s take on Annihilation.

I posted the photo on Instagram.

I posted it on Instagram for a few reasons. Firstly — I think the photo is beautiful.

I am not a photographer. I don’t care for the minutiae of aperture, ISO and shutter speeds. But I think I know what looks good in a frame and what makes a good subject, and I think this was a good photo.

You can see the photo here, on Instagram.

Secondly, I wanted to know what had happened to that deer. To get the second part of my answer. To crowd source some ideas. Had the driver also happened to be a hunter, pulling over and taking home some fresh venison? Had that person come later, discovering the body later and set to work? If so, was that someone from a fancy LA house or an unhoused person who’d finally, finally eat well? I’ve heard terms like “urban harvesting” before — was this that? Did I have it all wrong and a car grill had done the work of what I assumed was a knife? Did coyotes eat more delicately and with more precision than I had thought?

Thirdly — and yes, I will admit this, I knew it would annoy some people.

The place I had posted it was Instagram, a place full of delicious meals and beautiful bodies, canoodling puppies and smiling children. It’s celebrities prancing at the MET Gala, and influencers sucking in their stomachs and tightening their abs. There is an element of me that has disdain for the Instagram users sliding into my DMs with their hot takes on my personality, mental health, and posts they never bothered to read.

But the negative feedback for this one was more visceral than I expected. It was that of disgust and anger; horror and fear. I was called unhinged and disturbed; an idiot and a creep.

When confronted with criticism, I generally become curious — and this was no different. And so I started clicking through the profiles that seemed most angry, to see what was going on. And pretty quickly, I picked up a pattern. They were all, bar a few exceptions, American.

And then it all sort of snapped into focus for me. It’s been this unfocused idea running through the back of my mind for the last year or so, but it had remained blurry and unknowable. Murky threads with no end.

But I think I get it now.

I don’t know why — but Americans have this propensity to shy away from death in a way I haven’t really experienced before. And I’d take it a step further: I think that deep in their bones they’re very good at turning away from reality.

When reality is shoved in their face — in this case, via their Instagram feed — their reaction is pure horror. A hard unfollow.

In turning away from a dead deer it’s so obvious what else is being denied. Of course there’s the denial of how we consume animals: utterly disconnected from reality, a small packet of red flesh wrapped on the supermarket shelf.

There’s also the denial that we too exist in a fleshy, impermanent, meat suit that will one day be disposed of — hidden away as quickly as possible as everyone else moves on with their lives.

I know it’s a dangerous and possibly offensive jump to make here, but I can clearly see why the tens of thousands dead in Gaza are so easy to deny. They are a dose of reality that’s too horrific to swallow. They are the ultimate Hard Unfollow.

I have a personal belief that part of the deal of being here on earth is that we’re all in this together. I think we get to have our fun and our escapism, but I also don’t think we get to look away. Part of being here is actively engaging with the world going on around us, full of curiosity and wonder.

Turning away and denying reality is a privilege, and I think many Americans assume that privilege is a right.

---

I found myself in the desert yesterday, unrelenting heat pounding into my skin. My eyes were watering and the air felt heavy and tight. I was in a place called Palm Springs for a story I’m working on, but while I was there something else caught my attention.

Next to the road was this seemingly endless grey wall, a walled community to end all gated communities. On the corner I saw a name — “Cotino” — and a Disney logo. I veered off the road, going through a checkpoint and telling them I was there out of nothing more than curiosity.

I’d stumbled on Disney Corporation’s first “StoryLiving” development, and they let me inside. A series of exquisitely detailed dioramas laid out the plan for Walt Disney’s original dream: A wonderland where people can live out their lives in a perfectly curated environment.

People go to Disneyland for a perfect day. Cotino is where you escape for life.

A man took me on a tour of three show homes that have already been built, dropping by the perfect, self-cleaning lake that’s already been finished.

The cheapest home is about $2 million dollars and it goes up from there. I’m told 70% have been sold in the section we’re currently in. One house had guest quarters that were bigger than my entire apartment. The walk-in wardrobe was bigger than my bedroom. Each home comes with a pool and sauna.

There are nods to Donald Ducks and Mickey Mouses. Some nods are subtle. The wallpaper options are not.

This is “StoryLiving by the Disney Corporation”, and as I was being given a tour of a house’s fifth bathroom, another Instagram notification came in. “We didn’t fucking consent to this David Farrier.”

And I looked around and I realised I really was being given a tour of the American Dream. Where life is perfect and will always be perfect.

Death is far, far away. Yours, theirs, ours. As the heat beats down you wonder if this place could all be a mirage, especially that giant self-cleaning lake that’s glittering and shining brighter than any water you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

This would be such good Instagram content.

People would love it.

David.