Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 2 - White Deer #1

The next three deaths all involve incidental extras rather than established characters, but I suppose that, following my entry on the two unidentified blue foxes who died during the farm raid, I'm committed to covering these now too.  Besides which, the deaths in question are really too important/gruesome for me to just pass over.

White Deer Park was apparently overseen by a single human known only as the Warden, whom the animals had learned to semi-trust, despite their instinctive fear of anything two-legged and with opposable thumbs.  Unfortunately, the Warden falls ill during winter and is taken to hospital, leaving the park unguarded and open to raids from a pair of nefarious poachers, who reckon that they can pick off a few of the park's famous white deer herd in his absence.  Frankly, I find it odd that no one was sent to watch over the park in the Warden's stead, as it seems somewhat unbelievable to me that managing an entire park would be treated as solely his responsibly, but then I cannot claim to possess any direct knowledge as to how such places operate in reality.

The first of these killings happens off-screen and is merely over-heard by the Farthing animals.  They go to investigate and find a dead deer lying in the snow.

HORROR FACTOR: 5. The death itself occurs off-screen, but we get a good enough glimpse of the deer's body in the aftermath, and the splash of blood around its throat looks fairly gruesome.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 2. Took one for the herd, but entirely for the indulgences of a couple of devious humans who shouldn't even have been there in the first place.  That they just left the deer's body to rot implies that they were killing purely for the fun of it.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 5. Ordinarily it's hard to mourn for random extras, but damn, the violin strings in this case do a wonderful job of milking the situation.

RATING: 12

Time for another fun fact - the Poachers were the only human characters to get their own "how to draw" profile in an issue of Farthing Wood Friends.  Then again, they were among the very few humans in the series whose faces we actually saw.