"Orange you glad...

...I knit this scarf, for your double protection?" I asked H.

"Double?" he responded. "You mean, I can wrap it twice around my neck?"

"No, silly. Once for warmth, once for protection from the Mighty Hunters!"

Reading Kristin Nicholas's Berkshires-based blog post of December 8th, "It's Orange Season Here in the Country" (http://getting-stitched-on-the-farm.blogspot.com/), reminded me yet again of the inescapable fact--that in New England we're already deep into the season of Bambicide. And orange is the color of protection. Everyone who's not a deer is advised--legally required, in many areas--to wear orange clothing when on land approved for hunting.

For a while it's just been the bow hunters around here (southern Rhode Island), including one hardy soul, an anthropologist who teaches at Connecticut College. In the spirit of authentic participation, ML makes his own bows and then sits in trees and shoots the deer as they stroll past. Or not. He spent the better part of about six entire days, from 5.30 a.m. to a half-hour past dusk, perched in trees on our property hoping to bag one, but nothing happened. Meanwhile he read books and graded midterms. (Apparently he killed nine on a property adjacent to the Conn College arboretum, where he'd planted alluring foodstuffs, like corn and sorghum. Way to go, M!)

Gun-hunting began last Saturday, and non-hunters like moi and H like to wear orange even when we're not all that close to the line of fire. It makes us feel safe, though this may be illusory. (Our Portuguese Waterphobic Dog, Lola, also has an orange AKC-approved coat to wear when we walk in the nature preserves.) Last year, at his request, I knit H a fluorescent orange scarf out of exceedingly synthetic yarn that I found at Job Lot (a store that often carries weird knitting supplies, like clear plastic knitting needles from China that somehow resemble Christmas candy). The yarn's so lurid and bright it looks radioactive.