As I walked the dogs yesterday morning, I saw through the trees ahead a buck of substantial size. I often see deer along that road, but rarely bucks. Each time I see deer (or fox, sometimes even squirrels, birds, butterflies. leaves blowing across the road) it's a struggle to keep the dogs—Mickey in particular—under control. So I swiftly crossed the dogs to the other side of the road in hopes they wouldn't notice it as we passed it by.

Naturally, that's right when Mickey saw the buck...and the second it was bounding to meet up with. I tugged the yelping dogs in line and did my best to keep moving along.

"I can tell from that yelp that your dogs have seen the buck," said a gentleman—refined and eerily akin to 60-year-old Anderson Cooper—as he stepped from behind a bush. A bush he'd been working near, plucking weeds from his yard, not a bush he'd been lurking behind for unknown nefarious reasons. I think.

Me: Yeah, he certainly did.

Gentleman (clearly in awe): Five-by-five there.

Me (thinking WTH? Size? Must have to do with size): Oh yeah? It is big. I've not seen one that large yet this year.

Gentleman: I haven't either, but those are two five-by-fives and one four-by-three.

Me (using my infinite conversational skills): Three? Wow! I only saw two.

Gentleman: Oh yeah, there's three.

Me (pulling on dog leashes and itching to move along): Wow!

Gentleman (slowly shaking his head in disgust): Yeah, two five-by-fives. And I'm a bow-hunter and there ain't nothing I can do about it.

Me (in pseudo similar disgust): Yeah, you gotta just wave as they go on by.

Gentleman (in resignation): Ha...Yeah...

Me: Well, you have a good day.

Gentleman: You, too.