Embarrassment of Animals

I realized I had forgotten a book I needed at work and decided to run to get it. Literally. My work is about a mile away and is accessible, until the office park, by sidewalk, so I thought I’d take a jog in that direction.

As I left the facility I was nursing a nasty stitch so I decided to work on memorizing the opening 11 lines of Virgil’s Æneid, it’s an extra credit assignment.

As I walked around the road I could feel the warm sun on me, hear the sound of my words:

Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam…

I marched slowly, with my eyes closed, slowly reciting and intoning these words until I got to the end of the section that I was memorizing. I stopped and looked up from my note paper and looked to the right into the wooded area that abuts the ring road around the complex.

To my surprise I was not alone.

I looked to the left and, started, for lo there was a doe next to me. For her part, she stopped eating and stared back at me, about slightly more than a meter away from one another.

I think we both shared the awkward sense of having walked into an occupied, but unlocked bathroom.

“Oh, ho, ho, uh, well, uhm, yes, here we are, heh, yes?”