Communique of Unknown Voltage

 

Such a good day. The Sports Desk spent the early afternoon watching Texas beat up on Michigan, 31-12. For those of you confused as to why we were cheering for Texas, recall that in last year's SEC Championship Game, Alabama beat repeat National Champion Georgia, 27-24. If football followed the conventions of boxing, Alabama would have taken Georgia's championship belts with the victory. But then, in their very next game, Alabama lost to Michigan, 27-20 (OT) in the CFP Semifinals, so Michigan got Georgia's two championship belts from Alabama, and the Wolverines had the belts at the beginning of this season. At the beginning of the day today.

Georgia wants their belts back, but doesn't have a scheduled game against Michigan.  However, Georgia will play Texas on October 19, and now that Texas has won the belts from Michigan, the Bulldogs have a chance of winning them back. So even though the Sports Desk doesn't like Texas football, we were happy to see the Longhorns win today. But only today, although we need them to keep winning and not lose the belts until we play them on Oct. 19. 

Also today, the two-time National Champion, No. 1-ranked, undefeated Georgia Bulldogs beat unranked Tennessee Tech, 48-3. And then, as if the day couldn't get any better, unranked NIU beat No. 4 Notre Dame, 16-14, and we despise Notre Dame and their hunchback team.

But then came the real blessing of the day. After the football games, it was time to take out the trash. Literally. I was taking the garbage out to the bin just before sunset, the crepuscular hour when it's still light outside, when I saw a small whitetail deer in my front yard. 

I live in the city. Wildlife beyond squirrels, racoons, and the occasional opossum is rare. We're blessed with chipmunks and owls here, too, but a deer is quite the unexpected surprise. It froze and stared at me, trying to determine my intentions, and both of its big, rabbit-like ears were turned toward me.

I spoke to it softly and gently, "Hi, there guy," and "Not gonna hurt you," and that kind of thing. I didn't more or walk toward it, just stood there on my front stoop with a bag of trash in my hand watching him (or her) watch me. This lasted for two minutes or so, and then the deer suddenly bolted off around the side of my house and into the back yard.

My yard is fenced in on three sides, everything but the front, and there was no place for the deer to escape except to come back out where I had seen it. I went back there, but the deer had somehow disappeared. Hopped a fence or had found some little gap or something - I don't know. But it was gone.

I always take these random sightings as karmic omens from nature. I must be living right for a deer to decide that my yard was a safe place to pass through or for a big old barred owl to land in one one of my trees. It feels like a peek under the tent at the divine. It feels like a nod of approval from Mother Nature that I'm doing something right.

Even Nature must hate Notre Dame. That's got to be it.