« July is for Reading | Main | Tania Derveaux will Blow 40,000 Guys for Votes »
May 25, 2007
Thrice Caught in the Gaze of the Deerman
If he spies you 3 times. You die.
A week ago the column was devoted to recalling the legend of the half-man, half-deer who supposedly lurked in the woods north of Kewanee.We were responding to a request from Neponset seventh grader Gus Block who asked the newspaper to "uncover the truth" in an unbiased fashion. Gus had heard some "pretty tall tales" about this Deerman from his "parents and other old people" and wondered if his leg was being pulled. We have since learned Gus overheard the adult Sunday School class at the Church of Peace reminiscing about stories of Deerman one Sunday morning and his curiosity was piqued so he penned a letter to the paper.
[...]
As we explained last week to Gus and the rest of our readers, the legend of Deerman began in the early 1960s in a column in this newspaper called "Mostly Malarkey," written by editor and publisher Jerry Moriarity.
For several years the rumors of sightings and encounters circulated and "Deerman was here!" could be found scrawled on road signs, barns and walls throughout the Kewanee area.
[...]
... A Kewanee serviceman who asked to remain anonymous for his own safety read the Deerman column on our website and was amazed that the legend still exists. "The story I heard as a kid in the '80s was that Deerman was created by a man who earned his living skinning and tanning hides in his barn. Somehow, late one dark and stormy night, something happened and he was given two legs of a deer, a man's torso and arms (for writing), and the gigantic head of a 10-point buck," said our serviceman. "It's important to note that Deerman was not a cruel freak of nature, but the result of an unholy obsession with taxidermy."
Half-man, half-animal legends being bandied about at Sunday School, you say? One would think that the Deerman and Jesus just wouldn't mix.
(via warren ellis, star courier)
Posted by Groonk at May 25, 2007 03:46 PM | Ministry of Myth
