The Wild Hunt
Or: Come ceramics shopping with me, because I've tried everything a person can do, and still, every week, I plow into at least one deer*.
And I love deer.
Seven months, no newsletter. Difficult, life-altering events aside, I need to stop being so precious about what I write on here and occasionally churn out something absurd. I have three heftier pieces that I plan to upload in the coming months. In the meantime, here's a record of all the items I considered purchasing on eBay in a fit of insomnia and unyielding hyperfocus at 2 a.m. It's a listicle for the delusional; a solipsistic series of crazy coincidences. It's an olfactory experience:
Top notes: fresh earth, musk and night sweats.
Middle notes: wet cigarette ash sitting in the lip of an empty Monster energy drink can, and the thick layer of warm dust accumulating at the back of your television.
Base notes: unrelenting guilt and the nondescript cardboard box containing your father's ashes that just arrived unceremoniously via courier.
Lot 1: Stag
Shall I ever, in choruses that last all night long, set in motion my gleaming white foot in a Bacchic revel as I thrust my throat toward the upper air wet with dew, yes, thrusting it forward —just like a fawn playfully skipping around in the green delights of a meadow after she has escaped from the terrifying hunt.
Euripides, Bacchae.
I'll be moving interstate next year, to a town with a large deer population. There are many overwhelming logistics involved, so naturally, my top priority is finding an oddity, an objet d'art to distract me from the rising terror. Some may view this as frivolous spending in the pursuit of a fleeting dopamine kick, but my material belongings are sacred. Any monumental occasion, good or bad, calls for a commemorative trinket of some sort. It's like buying a souvenir of an experience, rather than a souvenir of a holiday. When I shop with this intention, every purchase is significant, even if I can't immediately articulate why.
I went on eBay looking specifically for ceramic wall decor, something like those mid-century kitsch flying ducks, but in the form of some frolicking deer. Special consideration would be given to pieces that had an air of darkness about them. All my favourite things make me feel a little sick. I was thinking of two deer in the centre of a chaotic gallery wall.
Maximalism can be an excellent way to express what goes on in the unquiet mind, and any good maximalist knows the key to a good gallery wall is texture. Variety. Dimension. Top tip: Between the prints and posters, consider hanging some dried flowers, an antique Lincoln Imp horse brass, or even try being spontaneous and shove an heirloom Art Nouveau brooch directly into the plaster (maybe not if you're a renter), but never underestimate the impact of a weird vintage wall plaque. I have a mounted Muntjac skull. I keep bells attached to the antlers in case it moves during the night. Muntjacs are small deer with great flaring scent glands on their faces. Don't look them up if you have trypophobia. The males have elongated canines that serve no purpose other than to initiate sex and/or violence—vampire deer, shedding the velvet from beyond the grave.
There were no ceramic Muntjacs of note available to buy at the time of writing. I did, however, find these two:
I'm naive, so at first I thought this was a calming little tableau. Beautifully crafted limbs; a shimmering glaze that made them look like they had just sprung out of a damp glade, wet with morning dew. I could even see the rainbow lens flare. Something was alluring about it. Brighter days ahead, freedom, self-possession, hurrah for friendship.
I love a good bit of hackneyed symbolism. One of my favourite things is when a deer appears to someone in a film. They can be a kind of heraldic vision, reminding the character of past traumas and foretelling those to come; or a dream figure, the product of a hallucination, signifying the repressed, the things that are just plain unspeakable.
Broadly speaking, in both a cultural and literary context, deer have been known to represent:
- Regeneration of the natural world
- Purity and innocence
- Christianity
- Resiliance
- Protection
- Fertility
- Vengeance
- Royalty
- Grief
- and so on.
Staring into the glistening orbs of a woodland creature is enough to make one feel a great many things. An excellent shortcut to pathos, it gets me every time. Especially when the messenger deer elicits an unexpected burst of emotion from a typically cold and stoic personality, reminding them of the fragility of life. I remember next to nothing about Stephen Frears' The Queen (2006), except the bit where her majesty Helen Mirren wanders away from a hunting party and comes face to face with a giant stag. She sheds a few uncharacteristic tears at its own (significantly more regal) splendour, before shooing it away as she hears the dogs approaching. In just over three minutes, this scene effectively covers more than half of the examples listed above. A triumph dripping in treacle.
With that in mind, I considered what these porcelain deer meant to me – and if they meant enough to warrant purchasing. And again, I'm naive. It took me far too long to realise that stag and doe weren't just frolicking. It's rutting season. The stag is in lustful pursuit. I probably would have clocked the situation straight away had they been a pair of Muntjacs. The last thing I need is a fertility symbol, yet I did request a hint of violence.
The seller's note on eBay reads:
LARGER DEER IS UNSCATHED. THE SMALL DEER HAS BEEN BROKEN AT THE ANKLE BACK LEGS AND THE TAIL. SOMEONE HAS METICULOUSLY PUT IT BACK TOGETHER.
Of course, the stag is unscathed.
You can barely see the break. The seller is right, the joins are meticulous, so much so that they look like delicate silver scars around the ankle. Somehow, it makes the whole thing look even more unsettling than if it had stayed broken—enviable use of superglue. I don't think the owner repaired it. Someone broke the doe and tried really hard in their clandestine attempts to pretend it never happened. They – more likely, 'he' – broke the doe on purpose in a fit of frustration and immediately felt guilty. But he got away with it. The stag is unscathed. I wondered what kind of deer they were. These ceramics were made in Japan. Sika deer, then? Maybe white-tailed deer. The mid-century was all about Bambi and big-eyed porcelain fawns, after all.
I got distracted, clicked out of eBay, and looked up facts about the white-tailed deer. I learned a lot. For example, I was unaware that COVID-19 antibodies have been detected in several deer and subsequently transmitted to humans. Then I started skimming some quite dense articles about the violence of stags during rutting season and watching some not-so-dense YouTube anecdotes from folks who have seen a white-tailed doe kick the shit out of a 'coy-ote' to protect her fawn. Then my mind wandered to forest fires. I'm moving to an area with a high fire risk at certain times of the year. I've donated money to help rehabilitate koalas and other native species during times of crisis, but I never gave a thought to the deer. It made me wonder how many deer there are in California and how many died during the January wildfires. Although I couldn't find those statistics, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as of the last count in 2017, there were an estimated 532,621 deer in the state alone. That's approximately a quarter of the entire Australian deer population. I resigned myself to the fact that many, many Californian deer likely burned to death. I opened a video of a doe running out of a thick cloud of smoke. I closed it after two seconds and decided to cheer myself up by looking at more earthenware—no more deer.
Lot 2: Peryton
I have long been considering a gargoyle to sit outside my front door. I found an affordable one: plastic, not stone. Shipping was free. I don't care; it will look better after a good while out in the weather, accumulating algae. I did not look at the dimensions before purchasing. I never do. I was expecting it to be at least thirty centimetres (1ft) tall. It was barely ten. I still like the pipsqueak. I'll give it a makeshift plinth or something to make it a little taller. I started searching for a more imposing creature. For the outside wall, maybe.
This is the best 'gargoyle' I found on eBay. Maybe not so imposing, but certainly captivating.
I've looked at Grotbat from both sides now From give and take, and still somehow It's Grotbat's illusions I recall I really don't know Grotbat at all. - Joni Mitchell.
There's not much in the seller description, but I appreciate the suggestions for use:
Incredibly unique vintage ceramic wall pocket in the form of a bat or gargoyle, featuring richly glazed tones of blue, grey, green, and reddish-brown. This expressive and quirky sculptural piece has a hollow cavity (likely for small flowers, incense cones, or as a novelty wall vase), and a hole at the back for wall mounting.
That was a little patronising. The poor thing does not deserve to be described as 'quirky' – it's a euphemism for 'weird', in the derogatory sense. No exceptions. The seller claims they are unaware of the artist. But did they really try? Did they at least do an image search? I proceeded to log a few (sensible) hours of research to find out. Aside from a few pottery houses that made 'wall pockets' (wall-mountable pots) using a similar technique, the search was a bust, even when I changed the search term from 'gargoyle' to 'grotesque'. Gargoyles are only a specific type of grotesque, the kind that doubles as a spout to drain water off a rooftop. The gargoyles are the nauseous ones. These days, the name is mainly associated with fantasy creatures that have a demonic or bat-like appearance, inspired by these early grotesques.
Grotesque Bat. Grotbat.
Grotbat is the kind of ceramic that is more in love with you than you are with it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be treated like a valued member of the family. Even though I haven't quite figured out what those frolicking deer meant to my disarrayed subconscious, Grotbat is my self-perception. I'm sure of it. That's not to say that if I buy it, I'll immediately gain wild amounts of confidence; just that – if Grotbat can do it, I can do it. Do it for Grotbat. Who needs a pretty beige deer when you can have a wide-eyed, screaming blue kombucha scoby? If I buy Grotbat, I'll need to find out what kind of plant would look nice spewing from that gaping maw. A Staghorn fern, maybe?
Shit.
My favourite grotesques can be found on The King's Fountain at Linlithgow Castle, in West Lothian, Scotland. I searched for images, as a reminder of the myriad grotesques adorning it. I found this shaky video – a 360 view of the fountain at one of the rare times it is actually turned on. It almost feels like you're there – but you're tired. You've had nothing to eat all day, and still refuse to take your eyes off the thing. About forty-five seconds into the video, a Peryton comes into view. I had forgotten about the Peryton – another fictional creature inspired by a grotesque, created by Jorge Luis Borges, likely based on images from the era in which this fountain was built: part deer, all misery.
The Perytons had their original dwelling in Atlantis and are half deer, half bird. They have the deer’s head and legs. As for its body, it is perfectly avian, with corresponding wings and plumage. . . Its strangest trait is that, when the sun strikes it, instead of casting a shadow of its own body, it casts the shadow of a man. From this, some conclude that the Perytons are the spirits of wayfarers who have died far from their homes and from the care of their gods... they [Perytons] are mortal foes of the human race; when they succeed in killing a man, their shadow is that of their own body and they win back the favour of their gods.
Jorge Luis Borges (1974) 'The Peryton' in The Book of Imaginary Beings, pg. 115 - 116, Penguin Books Australia.
Peryton are miserable creatures. They do everything to satisfy their god at the expense of their own happiness. Peryton seem to go against every traditional deer trope. Likely a deliberate move on Borges' part. I bet no one ever looked a Peryton in the eye and had a revelation. It makes a pathetic amount of sense that a creature like that should cast its gloomy shadow over this futile endeavour. That's where Grotbat differs from its cousin, the Peryton. The former is a conduit for self-actualisation, the latter is a deterrent. If I buy this thing – if — maybe I'll get something back.
Lot 3: Sika
I found this fun 'Godzilla on Piano Ceramic Coin Bank Small Piggy Bank Japan Retired'. I considered buying it for a friend, but then I realised she is in Japan as we speak and has probably just had a go on the Shin Godzilla zipline, so if she wanted, she could probably find this much cheaper herself. Hell, she could probably fish it out of a skip behind a Don Quixote store without too much trouble.
I mentioned Japanese Sika deer earlier. Apparently, all the plastic waste at the famous deer park in Nara is doing them significant damage. They're eating tourist litter, and they're dying. It was bad enough in 2010 when someone went in there and shot a deer with a crossbow. Then, in 2021, some prick killed one with an axe. Sika make the strongest venison, but neither of those incidents were necessarily hunting-related. Some folks just really hate deer.
I read a letter to the editor complaining that the feral deer in the area I'm moving to have not been classified as a pest, and thus are not open season for farmers and recreational shooters. I hadn't thought of the shooters. It's quite the Australian privilege. How am I supposed to go out deer spotting in the redwoods with the knowledge that any deer I happen upon might be dead the next day?
Deer were introduced to Australia as a game animal in the late 19th century. Numbers remained relatively low until a sudden surge in population occurred in the 1980s. They cause significant property damage. I care not. Wreck my yard, o' Forest Spirit, Night-walker. All will grow back stronger. Stand in my herb garden. Cast a spell so my rosemary doesn't die and my mint never wilts.
Godzilla stood on a deer in 1969.
Lot 5: Black-tail
Relatively shallow for a trinket dish. A ring pulled off with an exasperated grunt at the end of a long day would roll off the edge, under the bed, and get swallowed by the dog, costing thousands in vet bills. This is a life-ruining object.
The seller thinks it's either Diana or Pates – both Australian companies, offering more mid-century kitsch. I can see a bird. Or a duck, perhaps. Are those curled edges clouds? If so, why red? The bird appears to be unconscious. It looks like it crash-landed into some offal. It is indeed lustrous – just like a big wet slap in the face with a fresh piece of escalope. Diana and Pate pottery is so lustrous that it looks wet. Unpleasantly drenched; far too fresh. The shape of this thing is unsettling in its organic quality and somewhat dusty-looking. I want to run a toothbrush covered in Gumption over those crevices.
Surely deer hunters clean up as they go.
I feel that the previous owner used this as an ashtray. I bought a few packets of cigarettes last year. I hadn't smoked in years. On one of my last visits with my dad before he died, he asked me in a weak voice: 'You'd better be off the smokes again now.' I told him I couldn't afford it even if I wanted to. A pack of 30s these days costs about as much as Grotbat.
In 2023, all the scummiest tabloids covered a story about a Canadian woman and her grandfather, who set up a trail camera on their property to catch a glimpse of wild animals. What they caught was two scantily-clad people with long dishevelled black hair that looked like cheap wigs, crouching over a deer carcass. While the woman couldn't tell what exactly the pair were doing with the dead animal, she believed she saw one of them bring the hoof to their mouth. Baseless internet speculation ran wild – there's a satanic cult nearby, witches paying their respects, skinwalkers, wendigos. It could have been a prank the woman and her grandfather were clearly in on, or just two harmless strung-out hippies. Madwomen escaping a serial abuser, one Redditor said.
The most common species of deer in Powell River, British Columbia, is the Black-tailed deer. They usually give birth to twins. They resemble the frolicking pair I had in mind for my gallery wall. Black-haired twins. One deer with a broken leg. A hoof to a mouth. The hunter and the hunted.
Epilogue: What Deer Honk Is That?
These deer will be my neighbours:
- Fallow deer. They make a nice, moderate honking sound. It is the most soothing.
- Red deer. Their call sounds like one of those Groan Tubes you'd annoy your parents with as a kid.
- Hog deer. A little shorter than the others. Stocky. Sounds similar to the red deer, but just a little more like a cow.
- Sambar deer. Have quite a high-pitched honk, similar to that of a goose.
- A fawn's distress call sounds like a crying human baby recorded on one of those devices you put inside a talking doll. I hope to never hear it again.
Those shouldn't be too hard to remember. I have good hearing. But it's nothing like my dad's. He had an excellent ear for bird sounds. He had a cassette collection called What Bird Call Is That?. It came with a handy guidebook. I gave it to my uncle last week. He's a bird lover, too. I need a similar resource, but for deer. I fear the only way to learn them is via a hunter's guide. Maybe I am the hunter.
I bought nothing on eBay that night. Nothing felt right, and nothing made sense. A week later, the seller of Grotbat offered me a discount. I took it. It arrived yesterday. Packaged beautifully. They even threw in a tiny box of Tic Tacs. I'm going to put it inside Grotbat's mouth and keep it there forever. I'm going to wrap my gurning little scoby up in too many layers of bubble wrap and put it in a box in the garage, ready to move. Grotbat is not for now. Grotbat is for later. And that's fine.
*I have hit 13 deer in seven weeks driving down this road mister.
