Bambi Be Damned

This may surprise you, but blogging is not my primary source of income. If we had to live off what I make as a blogger, we’d die.

It might surprise you even more to learn what I do do for a living. I write junk mail, and those TV commercials with the 800 numbers. (Not spam though; don’t blame me for that.) 

This may not be a profession that is high on the list of esteemed livelihoods (I once had a car salesman sneer at me…a car salesman!), but it put my daughter through a very expensive art school and paid for our new house in Stamford.

I tell you this not because I am looking for copywriting assignments (you can contact me at haldirect@aol.com for your direct marketing needs), but because I once did a highly successful mailing for a magazine in which I swear I used the following headline:

THE GIRLS CALL ‘EM "FURRY CRITTERS." WE CALL ‘EM "DEAD."

We’ll give you the know-how to mow down any varmint!

As you might expect, the magazine in question was not Cosmopolitan. And while talking like this may not be a great way to pick up women (and certainly not a good way to befriend varmints), I have shown you this brilliant example of the copywriter’s art as a way to demonstrate that there are places where people walk around with shotguns, or bows and arrows, or possibly nuclear weapons, stalking critters large and small.

However sitting on our front porch with advanced weaponry would not work for us here in Stamford, primarily because we don’t have a front porch. But we do have a varmint problem, or at least my wife does. The deer in our neighborhood firmly believe that the plant life on our property, which my wife struggles to keep alive, is, in fact, a buffet.

So she decided to take decisive, if non-artillery-related action against our Bambis. She purchased deer repellent, which she sprayed liberally over our property.

Let me just say that this stuff is grossly mislabeled. A more accurate description would be "every-living-thing" repellent. I have reason to believe that this product was originally developed by the army for biological warfare. They’d just poor it over the enemy troops from helicopters and the combatants would immediately lay down their arms because they’d be too occupied holding their noses and barfing.

How bad was the stink? We had an appliance delivered later the same day, and the guys told us to check to make sure we didn’t have a septic back-up. Can you imagine what they would have thought if they knew what I do for a living! In conclusion, I don’t know if the deer will stay away, but it might be awhile before we have guests.

For more on our adventures as first-time homeowners at age 57, and moving to Stamford, visit http://theupsizers.wordpress.com/