To my delight (and a certain amount of surprise), I’ve had lots of feedback to the last blog about the deer and the mis-translation.
Given that until now, I thought I was only really writing this for the questionable benefit of my wife and regular reader Mr S Bean (really), the heat is now on to come up with something vaguely interesting for future episodes. In the meantime, you might be interested to know about part two of the dead deer saga…
After the initial debacle, cycle rides and runs past the ex-Bambi’s mother became a little more challenging. Nothing like 30+° weather and a rural environment to bring out a little accelerated decomposition. On day one, the boys told me, there were a few maggots (by the way, you might want to stop eating before you read this). By day two, there was a pretty unpleasant smell from about 20 yards away. By day three, this had extended to about 50 yards, and unfortunately on day four, we all had to cycle past ex-BM on the way back from a day out. We held our breath from about 100 yards out, and pedalled furiously. Jr Emu #1 was first past the scene of the crime, and looked to his right at the key moment. We all sailed past without looking, intent on getting past without having to breath in, except for #4, who is the inquisitive sort.
Having exhaled and breathed in some relatively un-putrid air moments later, #1 impatiently broke the news:
“She’s had her head cut off!”
#4 confirmed this, and thanked us all profusely for the nightmares that he expected as a result of his first and last view of ex-BM.
Now, this begs a number of mystery questions, and as you can imagine, conspiracy theories currently abound in the family Emu. My personal theory is that someone wanted to get the whole beast home, but only had a hacksaw and a bicycle. Mrs Emu is convinced that somewhere nearby, there’s a sitting room with a new hunting trophy above the fireplace.
In any case, by the next day, someone had thought to cover the carcass with lime. The smell had gone, but the mystery remained…
The Emu 