The Tragedy of Man v. Beast

This is perhaps the most simultaneously strange, unbelivable, and hilarious story I've ever read.

 

I can see it now, a man is sitting in his house, watching the new episode of "Desperate Housewives" when he hears a CRASH!  He runs to his daughter's bedroom, responding to her terrified screams. Contingencies don't have time to run through his mind as he blows through her door, expecting to find a burglar, and instead halts, in horror, to see BAMBI standing over his frightened youngling.

 

Without hesitation, he channels his inner Daniel Boone, John Wayne, and Crocodile Hunter, and leaps towards the enraged herbivore.  Buying his daughter just enough time to escape into the hallway, he recalls the ninja training her learned as a youth at Camp Catchatoochie, and strikes the beast in its solar plexus, only to find that deer don't have solar plexi. At least, not where men do. 

 

In this moment of reflection, he takes a hoof to jaw.  Startled, but unphased, he momentarily retreats to the hallway, realizing that the best offense is a good defense.  He turns to his wife, who has run to his aide, shotgun in hand.  For a moment he thinks that his wife, standing there in in her hair-rollered, pink bathrobed decadence and brandshing a walnut stock-cobalt blue-steeled boomstick, has never looked sexier.  However, his primortial sexual urges will have to wait, for the beast has started rollicking around the room, smashing everything in sight and trampling his daughter's Bratz bedspread.  Angered by the potential loss of the sacred bedspread, which he bought her last summer for her 9th birthday, on sale, at the local Wal*Mart, the man realizes he must dig deeper than Wayne and Boone.  He summons his inner Neaderthal, that Paleozoic meathead inside us all.  His wife, recognizing the look in his eye from the last time her husband mixed Wild Turkey, Schlitz, and a Dukes of Hazzard marathon, backs away in awe.

 

"Keep the gun, baby! and call the POL-ice!" he yells.  "Tell Bobby Sue I love 'er, and go hole up in the den! If I don't make it-- you kill this sum'bitch before he gets to my bowlin' trophies, y'hear!"  As she heads for safety, little Bobby Sue comes to share a tender moment with her father.  She tugs on his flannel shirt and says, "Daddy, please don't die..."  Her father looks at her with a glint in his eye he's not had since he saw That Bastard Jeff Gordan crash live at Talledega, smiles a crooked smile and whispers to his baby girl, "If you want to see me kill a deer with my bare hands, gimme a "Hell Yeah...."" 

 

Bobby Sue, in tears, shouts an emphatic "HELL YEAH!" And while the beast lets out a snort-grunt so powerful, deep, and strong, it sounds like the noise that time forgot, he leaps into action.

 

In forty minutes of bare-fisted fury, he horse-collars, sucker-punches and generally pummels the beast until he nears exhaustion.  The police eventually arrive, but can do nothing but stand in awe, and bear witness to the spectacle from the doorway.  The man, covered in sweat, blood, and matted deer hair will not relent. He will protect his house. 

 

Though the beast has advantages in speed, agility, strength, hooves, and antlers, itdoes not have the man's wits, nor his unyielding heart.  Broken and battered, the man takes an antler first to his thigh, then to his gut, as he feels ribs crack and burn inside his body.  His lungs fill with bile as he struggles to stay concious.  Then, as though it was his destiny, his mind's eye sees a myriad of great movie moments, a message from God himself to stay the course, "Get, up you sunufabitch, cuz Mickey loves ya!" "My sons were better men!" "KAHHHHHHHHHN!" "I believe in you, Peter" "Never let go Jack!" and then finally, Bobby Sue and a simple "Hell yeah." 

 

Emboldened by his vision, he pounces like a wounded Cougar, and somehow finds a way to get atop the beast's back.  Instinctively realizing it has made an awful mistake in allowing the man position, the beast writhes and bucks in a brahmanian attempt to save itself.  And then, as the man wraps his arms around it's muscular neck, and the two animals' sweat and blood and fear mix for the last time, a calm comes over them both.  Their eyes meet, and for the first time, these two creatures understand one another.  With a solemn whisper the man can only say, "sorry, dear friend.." and use his last gasps of strength to twist its neck until he hears a "crack" so horrid, he is instantly convinced God does not exist.  As the animal slumps to the ground, the man falls to the floor in exhausted, bittersweet victory. Hating himself for surviving, he looks to the stunned policemen, screams, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!" and loses conciousness. His family safe, his heart, forever broken.

 

-apk