DEER DIARY

After CAZZIE DAVID moved into the hunting lodge of an Old Hollywood star, she got in touch with her animal instincts

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The strikes had just ended. It may or may not have been the end of Hollywood itself. I had just moved into a new house that I was told was once the hunting cabin of a movie star during the golden age of Hollywood. Even though I didn't know anything about the movie star beyond that he was a movie star and, I guess, a hunter, with a hunting cabin in LA.

I had spent almost my entire life here, but all I knew about the ecosystem was that it was fake—an arid climate kept lush by imported water and exotic plants. A lot of lawns, something my mother (an environmental activist) calls “dead zones” and thinks should be illegal. “They do nothing for the bees,” she says.

The only wildlife I encountered was the occasional lizard or hummingbird. Once in a while, we'd turn off Sunset and the beams of our headlights would catch the eyes of a coyote. Thus, the idea that anyone could have hunted here was...confusing. The closest anyone in this city got to hunting was making movies and shows about people who hunted. Or dating.

That’s the beauty of Hollywood. We live at a comfortable remove from life and death, i.e., from reality, and we like it that way.

I saw them shortly after moving in. Four deer prancing across the hillside. I was amazed—not only because this was LA, but because I'd been enchanted by deer ever since seeing Bambi at six years old.

As they are for all Americans, Disney movies were the foundational cinematic experience of my childhood. Which is to say they completely traumatized me. They were supposed to teach us about life and death. Instead, Bambi taught me that my mother was going to be taken from me at any moment, and I would be left orphaned, trying to survive on magical thinking alone. I was inconsolable for weeks. My mother had to bring me to a hypnotist to erase my newfound knowledge of the reality of life. This is possibly why my takeaway from