With summer looming menacingly around the corner, most of the animals in the woods have now retired to the comfort of their groves trying to, as the youth of today put it, 'beat the heat'. The deer however, are facing a different sort of heat. With the end of another financial year, they can be seen rushing around with their paperwork, indicating beyond doubt that it is Income Tax season. The hares and rats seem to be very popular now, as the former is good at multiplying and the latter at deducting. Any naturalist who cares for a walk in the forest would find it common to see a deer accompanied by rat and a hare, busy with their calculators. However, this is also a season where puns and other such tactless remarks could prove dangerous. A good example would be the sordid tale of Simon Pickering who on encounter one such trio in the wood remarked, quite distastefully, that they might try deducting the 'deerness' allowance. He apparently departed hurriedly, leaving his butterfly net, magnifying glass and body behind. They found it later to have been bitten, gored and trampled, about a week after the incident, or so the chaps down at Homicide say.
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Another story circulating the suburbs of late is the tale of Michael J. Lenner. A student of the eleventh grade, Lenner had been humiliated by his fellow classmate and rival Jakob Lee. The details of the humiliation we will never know but reliable sources indicate it had something to do with a litre of maple syrup and a large number of ants. Anyway, Michael had apparently been up all night plotting suitable retaliation, and hatched upon what he believed was a foolproof plan. Posing as the plumber, Michael entered his rival's lavatory armed with a tin of Anabond. Apparently he then used up the entire tin on the commode seat. All would have gone well for Michael, except that he slipped just as he was finishing the job. Rumours are that his face was glued so badly to the seat that he has been sent abroad to have it removed surgically. Sadly for Lenner, the humiliation did not stop there. Apparently he had entered the wrong house in the first place, as he was not in the Lees' residence, but rather in the that of the Pilsburys', which leads us to believe that everything had worked out for the best in the end.
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