Radioactive Deer

After delivering another brilliant and inspiring lecture, I got in my Cadillac Brougham and started driving back to my hotel. Suddenly a deer dashed into the road, so I swerved and slammed on the brakes. Then I climbed out of the Caddy, and, since the creature was still standing there, I approached it — as I got closer, I noticed that this was no ordinary deer. When I slowly lifted my arm and tried to pet his furry head, he bit my face.

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Later, I was enjoying cocktails in my trophy room with some friends, and one of them noticed the deer head mounted on the wall and remarked jokingly: “Where’s the rest of him?” I explained that I left the remains in the road. So, since my friends expressed keen interest in this matter, we all climbed into my Cadillac, and I drove them to the scene of the above encounter. 

We quickly located the creature’s headless corpse: it was right where I left it. But something was strange — “Look here,” said one of my friends, who was crouching down next to the cadaver and pointing at the wound, “this thing is regenerating into a brand-new calf, like how a lizard’s tail grows back after you jerk it off.” And, sure enough, a fresh fawn’s brain and face were steadily ballooning out of the decapitated deer’s neck-hole. 

“Oh, gosh, no,” I cried: “The thing is mutating!”

Now, as I turn to flee, the radioactive deer leaps up and bites the seat of my trousers. This leaves me glowing green and hot, plus slime is oozing out of my pores. 

The rabid creature begins drooling lava and tapping its hooves upon an oversized keyboard — it is apparently developing a computer program that will liquidate my extended family. And, sure enough, in a few moments, when my extended family shows up at the scene to visit, they all get bit to death by the deer. Their corpses leak shiny radioactive fluid.

Now the mutant deer expectorates into a heap of sugar and mashes the spittle into a paste; then he trots over and anoints my eyes with this mixture, and he says to me: “Go, wash your face in the pool of Sorites.” (That last term is a Greek word that means “Horrible poison made from a heap of granules”.) I went away therefore and washed, and came back blind.

“What’s this?” I said to the radioactive deer, “you have destroyed my sense of sight? So now I’m just a green glowing thing that can’t even see what happens next?” 

In answer, the mutant whinnied. Then it started flying overhead — at least, that’s what it seemed to be doing; for I could hear the sound of its wings flapping, and I felt a gentle breeze on my face. Then the deer began misting and slobbering radioactive goo all over me, and I felt like I was changing from green to purplish red. And instead of a mild breeze, the weather became rather windy. It was like that one perfume commercial.