My old man always used to rib a friend of the family about an incident that happened when they were bunking together in forestry school. The friend had a weakness for chocolate covered raisins, and my father (oh! the shame!)went out into the woods one day, picked up some deer poop, dipped each little droplet in chocolate, and offered them to his friend, who wholeheartedly ate them.

I am 34 years old; by my reconing, I've heard this story approximately 23 times (at Christmas, when we usually visit those family friends, except for the couple of years after the hostess served that weird seafood medeley...&c.). My father (the depravity!) loves to rub this story in his friend's nose, although he too savors chocolate covered raisins.

But then came the time, shortly after Christmas, when I was steelheading on the Green River, and happened across a freshly deposited pile of glistening little deer droplets. I took them up, dear reader, I did, and on my way home I stopped and bought some chocolate. It was difficult to get each little droplet covered in chocolate, but I managed to make some impressive looking turtle-type things--clumps of chocolate-covered deer poo--that I left out on wax paper to cool.

I'd risen early; I now napped in front of the TV, and didn't hear a peep from the family until they called me to dinner. Imagine my surprise when I went upstairs and saw that THREE OF THE CLUMPS WERE GONE. Little wrinkles in the wax paper clearly traced their outline.

My father no longer tells that story at Christmas. I don't think he finds it so funny any more. He certainly had no laughing words for me...