{"id":17139,"date":"2019-11-27T16:16:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T21:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=17139"},"modified":"2020-01-02T14:35:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T19:35:14","slug":"what-are-the-deer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/what-are-the-deer\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are the Deer?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 450px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d2d2d2&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23d2d2d2&amp;d=dec19_flipbook_for_web&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=82&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">December 2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em><span class=\"s1\">By Anna Chotlos<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17151\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17151\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17151\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/DEC19-Fiction-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"good mornind. cup of coffee in bed. Close up. In blue interior\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/DEC19-Fiction-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/DEC19-Fiction-200x120.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/DEC19-Fiction.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-17151\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">good mornind. cup of coffee in bed. Close up. In blue interior<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">W<\/span><span class=\"s1\">hen it becomes winter, the deer start knocking over our garbage cans every midnight. You touch my arm to wake me, to listen to the hooves tramping outside. Our walls are too thin. We tie the cans closed with bungee cords. \u201cYou are not raccoons,\u201d we tell the deer. \u201cYou are too beautiful to eat our trash.\u201d The deer stand in our front yard and do not listen to us. The deer do not stop knocking over our garbage, trailing garlands of plastic on their hooves and antlers. The deer are beautiful animals. We put our garbage cans into the garage. The deer find our spare garage door opener. The deer press the button with their soft brown noses. The deer do not really want our garbage. We know because they talk to us at night, through the thin, thin walls. \u201cWe are hungry,\u201d say the deer. \u201cPlease feed us.\u201d What do deer eat? we wonder. We buy a salt lick for our deer. We imagine the deer belong to us. \u201cSalt is not enough,\u201d the deer tell us. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d we ask the deer. \u201cWe are so cold,\u201d the deer say. So we give the deer our scarves, even the scarves we love, the silk scarves our grandmothers gave us. The deer look so beautiful with our scarves tied around their slender necks. The deer admire our Christmas lights. The lights are shaped like small deer, made of white-coated wire wrapped in strings of twinkle lights. \u201cHow did you string together starlight?\u201d the deer ask. They are full of light, luminous. What are the deer? We begin to dream about the blur of trees and the weight of antlers. Beside me, your legs twitch and shift in your sleep. The deer learn to knock on our doors. We do not need to speak through the walls anymore. We do not need to speak at all. When we open the doors they say, \u201cPlease let us in. It is so cold outside.\u201d When we let the deer inside, they lie down in our beds, making ovals in our comforter and pillows, just like the hollow places other deer leave bedding down in the grass. We ask the deer, \u201cWhere will we sleep now?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 2019 fiction by Anna Chotlos. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17139"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17286,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17139\/revisions\/17286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}