Summer poppies in Minnesota

One Minnesota story per day…maybe. Today is about the wild dead deer of Minnesota and a sick dog!  Buddy, Robert and Marsha’s dog has IBD, inflammatory bowel disease, for which there seems to be no cure. He has been to regular vets, specialist vets and holistic vets. Nothing so far has worked; the only thing they all agree on seems to be a high-protein diet that cannot include any easily available meat products. So the dog must have venison (occasionally turkey can substitute)…and one vet suggested kangaroo if the first two didn’t work!  Robert and Marsha’s acquaintances have been pretty much tapped of any freezer stock of venison (leftover from last hunting season) at this point and Buddy is easily tired of turkey. What to do?

The deer and the car

This morning, driving home from the vet’s where Buddy had a weekly blood test, Robert spotted some very fresh road kill, a recently dead (within the 15 minutes they were in the vet’s office) young deer. Dead deer are sprawled all about the highways of the north woods, victims of semi’s, pickups, old cars, and even new cars on the first trip off the lot. Deer are suicidal creatures that wait along roadsides for the sole purpose of leaping in front of unsuspecting vehicles. But in this case, it is all for the good of Buddy the dog.

Road kill up close and sad

Robert brought the deer home in the back of the truck, backed into the garage, laid the still-warm limp young body on the big blue tarp and started hacking and slicing. My brother used to be a hunter before enlightenment so he knows how to do this gory business. The sight is not so bad, no worse than NCIS for example, but the smell is horrendous, rank offal odors, bloodied hairy hide, warm flesh—like an African market.

Becoming dog food

Saw cattle butchered when I was a kid, forgotten how gory

The deer’s good parts have been cut up and are slow-cooking on a grill in the garage. I am drinking a beer called Nordeast, “Named after the hardworking neighborhood where the original Grain Belt Brewery established its roots back in 1893. ‘Nordeast’ is an endearing term which comes from the Northern and Eastern European immigrants and their language which helped shape Northeast Minneapolis. This amber American Lager is our way of honoring the storied past of Grain Belt and the people who helped to make it legendary! Cheers!” (from Nordeast’s website)

Low-cal Minnesota lunch

Lunch is served—hot dish, cold cream cheese-based pizza, sandwiches, sour cream raisin bars and ice cream…just a little something.

We’re just a bit cynical up here

Tuesday’s tale from the banks of the Mississippi in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.