North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Who killed Bambi?

The Business Expansion Schemes seemed like a good idea at the time. It was one of a number of innovative tax exemptions introduced in the eighties and Nineties. The Government gave a tax exemption to people with money to invest in industries that would benefit hte country and that might otherwise have trouble attracting capital. Well, that was the idea.

There was a number of schemes that qualified, many of which would probably have happened anyway. For example, tourist developments, that all-purpose phrase, were encouraged, which led to God-awful holiday cottage developments spreading like a white fungus across every beauty spot in the country. Musicians could use the BES schemes to raise money to make albums - Jack L gave it a try.

Another tax scheme encouraged new forms of farming. Ostriches and deer farms began to appear, with the prospect that the lean, non-BSE ridden meat of these exotic creatures would supplant beef and mutton. some hope. As some of the farmers discovered, ostriches are bad-tempered creatures (I discovered this myself the hard way as a kid, when, on a visit to Fota wildlife park, I tried to pluck a feather from one of the ostriches as a souvenir. He took it very very badly indeed. Ouch). Deer require a nine-foot high , secure fence to keep them in - a far cry from the odd strand of barbed wire that most farmers use for cattle. Many of the farms, not long in operation, have disappeared again.

I was visiting the parents' place recently, and something was afoot. A couple of the neighbours had hit deer while driving at night - no one injured (unless you count the deer). The place is crawling with deer; of the daft, wander-out-in-front-of-cars variety. the council have put up a couple of warning signs (though I doubt if the deer can read them) and I'm sure some of the locals are planning a 12-bore solution. The reason for the sudden influx of deer is that a local farmer has tired of his deer farm, and simply let his stock run free. Which they have.

I was driving to Dublin early one morning a few months ago to catch a flight when I passed a man standing on the side of the road, flagging me down. His car was parked on the verge, and a body lay on the road. Fearing the worst, I pulled in. He had hit a stag, which had jumped out onto the road from the garden of a nearby house. The car had carried the deer on its bonnet for about 30 or 40 yards, leaving a trail of shattered glass, and an enormous dent in the front of his car.

The stag was in a bad way; one rear leg snapped and bent backwards, and coughing up blood. Another motorist stopped and we dragged it off the road and onto the verge. Soon after, the stag arched his back, his breathing eased, and the spark of life slowly faded from his eyes. By the time the animal had died, a number of cars had stopped to help. Now, if you were a passing motorist, and you happened upon a number of cars parked on the side of the road, with lights flashing, and a bunch of people huddled in a group on the verge, would you (a) slow down and drive carefully past what you presumed was a crash scene or (b) continue to drive like a lunatic at full belt past the crowd ? There must have been a lot of people in a rush that morning.

The area where the deerstrike is not known for wild deer, but there is a deerfarm a couple of miles away. It occurred to me that I was lucky - if I had left my house a few minutes earlier, it would have been me flagging the other guy down. Now, I've never seen a deer on a main road in all my years of driving. Three weeks after this incident, I was driving through Maam Cross, around 8pm . About two miles after Peacock's hotel, a deer walked out in front of me. Or rather almost did, since I passed it as it made to stride onto the road. Near miss! I reversed back to have a look at it but it was gone. I have never even heard of wild deer in the area, and I almost had one as a bonnet souvenir. If the law of averages means anything, I shouldn't see another deer for ten years.

Posted by Monasette at December 11, 2003 11:42 PM