10. Deer Are Weird

10 Deer Are Weird "Gasp!" we all gasped. Who would take a bite out of a zucchini that was growing in our garden? Andrea looked at Ryan, who will eat anything. Emily looked at Ryan. Michael looked at Ryan. Alexia looked at Ryan. I looked at Ryan. Neil looked at Ryan. Everybody was looking at Ryan.*

"Don't look at me," said Ryan. "It wasn't Ryan," Miss Nichol said as she looked at the zucchini through a magnifying glass. "I reckon it mighta been... a deer." "Gasp!" we all gasped again. I looked around. I didn't see a deer anywhere.

"It could be more than one deer," said Mr. Tony. "Two deers?" I asked. "Arlo," said Andrea, "two of them are still called deer." Huh? How could two deers be a deer? Maybe they were twin deers. "Could it be three deers?" I asked. "No," said Andrea. "If there are three of them, they're still called deer." "So how many do you need before you can call them deers?" I asked. "No matter how many deer ya have, ya still say deer," said Miss Nichol. "But if you have two dogs you don't say dog," I said. "You say dogs." "Deer aren't dogs," said Mr. Tony. "And two deer are still called deer." "A hundred deer are still called deer," said Andrea. Deer are weird. The point is, a deer was eating our veggies. Or maybe a bunch of them were eating our veggies. "Why would a deer do that?" asked Alexia. "I reckon it was hungry," said Miss Nichol.

Duh! "We made this garden to feed the kids in our school," said Emily, "not to feed deer." "That's right!" everybody agreed. Mr. Tony suggested we build a fence around the garden to keep the deer out. He should get the Nobel Prize for that idea. That's a prize they give out to people who don't have bells. Mr. Tony got some wood and saws and hammers and stuff. We worked really hard measuring and hammering and nailing. But it was fun. Building stuff out of wood is way more interesting than gardening.

Finally, after a million hundred hours, we finished building the fence. It even had a gate that opened and closed. "There!" said Mr. Tony. "This will keep the deer out of our garden."