Old Man Magic: Booby Traps!
It's not far into the trap, as the crow flies
So I'm driving to work. It's 4:30 a.m., and I'm a morning person in the sense that since I wake up so early I feel the compulsion to let everyone know that I am a morning person.
They say it's darkest before the dawn, but I live that darkness daily, and I can tell you that the sun brings only enough light to better illuminate the horrors of wage labor. It only gets worse following the dawn, not better. There are fewer cars on the road, fewer distractions, sure. Your mind wanders in those moments of commute. But where others might see hiding in the shadows cruel fiends and a malignant unknown, I see possibility.
I also see deer.
They're vile animals, put on this earth by the devil's most spiteful lieutenant. They're tall rats. Featherless pigeons. Hooved insurance claims.
It's 4:30 a.m. and I spot a deer. I'm traveling at 63 m.p.h. southbound on a two-lane highway, approximately eight ticks on the speedometer above what some might consider the legal maximum. The deer is standing in a shallow ditch. It says, "Yes, I will ruin your day, and I will do so without a thought in my head." It says, "Yes, I will trade my life for the chance to inconvenience you and it will not be for malice, for I feel nothing other than the primal drive to be terrible." It says, "Yes, it's too late to brake."
It didn't actually say those things, because deer do not talk. But that doesn't mean they aren't true.
So I accelerate.
Commander
Urza, Prince of Kroog
Deer are living traps. They're Satan's way of putting obstacles in your way when you least expect them.
There are a lot of benefits to Midwest country living, staking up your lot in the liminal spaces between civilization. Things are quieter, people are easier to avoid. No one bothers you if you don't bother them. But what you gain in freedom from people, you lose in freedom from nature.
Nature is malevolent. We hear platitudes about how we as people are a part of nature, and it's best to aspire to be in tune with it. Harmonized. That's a lie. If we were supposed to be in tune with nature, then why do I have allergies? Why do ticks exist? Or deer?
Man is meant to aspire to dominance over nature, not subservience. We're meant to create grand machines, war engines and mechanical monstrosities, and we're meant to murder our brothers in fits of rage using housewares. And yet, still deer remain, in defiance of our machines.
I have a neighbor who thinks deer are magnificent creatures. Regal, with a crown of antlers and an air of jocund mystery. She feeds them carrots and calls them all "Bambi" regardless of age or gender. You can't just do that, I told her. You're attracting an unsavory element to our area. You have no regard for my wishes, and our proximity dictates that you must take my feelings into consideration and hold them at a higher esteem than your own. And I don't like deer.
She continued to feed them, even offering corncobs and blocks of salt as aperitif and digestif to the carrot medley, respectively.
Artifacts
Too many times I found my garden eaten. My ornamental shrubbery devoured. And you know I take my yard seriously.
I had had enough. I told my neighbor that if she didn't stop feeding those damn deer, I'd do something about it myself. She had laughed, told me that what a person does on their property is no one's business but their own. She said deer aren't any worse than moles, raccoons, or chipmunks. And to be fair, all those creatures are terrible, but deer are indisputably the worst. My dog can deal with the former two, and my cat the latter.
Here, deer are hunted. But not year-round. It's got to be a certain time of year, with a certain kind of weapon. And as much as your passion to kill might take hold and drive you do wrap your hands around a deer's sinewy neck and wring, they're unsurprisingly difficult to corner. They're the kind of animal that would willingly throw itself through a glass door for little discernible reason, so they aren't keen on being strangled by an angry human.
But as infuriating as they are, they're equally stupid, and much like neighborhood teens, they're easy victims of traps.
Anvil of Bogardan
Arcane Signet
Ashnod's Altar
Azorius Signet
Booby Trap
Bubble Matrix
Cloud Key
Gilded Lotus
Grim Monolith
Helm of the Host
Lithoform Engine
Mishra's Bauble
Mystic Forge
Sculpting Steel
I told the neighbor that while I cannot intentionally murder a deer in the summer, she's right in another way as well. What a person does on their property is no one's business but their own, and if a person wants to construct elaborate booby traps to dissuade marauding deer from devouring one's hydrangeas, one is free to do so. My neighbor hemmed and hawed, explaining that it's still illegal to litter my property with deadly traps. What about the mailman, she asked. What about the guy who shows up randomly every month to try to talk homeowners into hiring his company to replace the roof?
Collateral damage, I told her. And she better remember that in case she thinks she can march up my driveway to complain about my Manilla Road cover band's practice nights.
Step 1: Gather Materials
These are all things that anyone has lying around their house. Source a spool of quality fishing wire, a water bottle, one round of 5.56 ammunition, nail polish remov- (ed. note - we're not putting a step-by-step guide about building an explosive booby trap into a Magic: The Gathering article)
Servo Schematic
Sol Ring
Spine of Ish Sah
Stone Calendar
Strionic Resonator
Talisman of Progress
Thopter Shop
Thran Dynamo
Thran Turbine
Time Bomb
Unwinding Clock
Worn Powerstone
After the traps were built, it was time to install them. I placed them strategically around my property, near places where there was evidence of deer incursions. I warned my neighbor one more time that if she didn't get rid of the mound of carrots at our property line, there was no going back. She laughed.
Enchantments
I'm not a chemist. And like most things in which I pretend to be knowledgeable, in reality I read about chemistry for about five minutes at my local library's internet. We don't get internet where we are, only deer.
After that five minutes' perusal, I assumed I'd learned everything I'd need to know to get started, and I'm smart enough to improvise the rest. Intelligence is like a bell curve: the stupidest among us, like amoebas or yeast, are so stupid they can't possibly get themselves into any trouble. They're on one side of the curve. On the other, it's those of us who are so truly smart they know they know nothing and spend so much time learning about learning that they are never in danger of living life. But all of us in the middle are either just smart enough or just stupid enough to pose a threat to ourselves, and I'm in the middle of the middle.
It was around 3:00 a.m. when I heard the first explosion.
Field of Dreams
Mystic Remora
Precognition
Propaganda
Rhystic Study
Telepathy
Thopter Spy Network
Sorceries
I was just getting up for work. I'm a morning person, remember.
The east-facing windows of my ranch house were turned to fractals. The very foundation let loose a guttural cough in response to the explosion. Car alarms echoed in the night. Dogs miles away were barking. And that was just the first moments of the first booby trap. It was several seconds still before the deer rained back down.
Argivian Restoration
Cruel Fate
Drafna's Restoration
Eye Spy
March of Progress
Portent
Reconstruction
Supreme Verdict
Thoughtcast
I put on my yard work New Balances so I wouldn't step on broken glass. I felt the night air's breeze in my living room, smelled on it the char. There was the glow of a small fire at the treeline. That's where I saw a deer two nights ago, sneaking through the woods that form a natural barrier between my property and the neighbor's. I reckoned that it'd be some time before I saw a deer there again, at least one that's alive and unexploded.
I heard a thunk. A wet, heavy thunk, on the roof. Then another, and another, some louder and some softer, as if each impact was an object of different weight. I counted seven in total. Maybe now my hydrangeas will be safe.
Creatures
It seemed like hours that I was standing in my living room, next to my glassless window, staring out into the darkness of the night. But it was only a few moments, roughly the time it took my neighbor to be roused from her slumber and rush over to beat on my front door with her spindly fist. I opened it, my eyes aglaze. I told her she's lucky I didn't booby trap my driveway like I said I would. She screamed obscenities. I could hear sirens in the distance.
Argivian Archaeologist
Bronze Guardian
Emry, Lurker of the Loch
Etherium Sculptor
Foundry Inspector
Karn, Legacy Reforged
Losheel, Clockwork Scholar
Metalworker
Rootwater Mystic
Shimmer Dragon
Spark Double
When the second booby trap detonated, she was flung toward me, and I caught her in my arms because I'm a gentleman. She pushed herself away and said I'll be going away for a long time after this. I said obviously, I have to work a double today. I told her she should step inside before the deer rain began again.
Instants
Now it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm traveling at 63 m.p.h. southbound on a two-lane highway. I and the deer lock eyes. It knows what I did, and I know that it knows.
This is no ordinary deer. This is a deer that knows things. This is a deer that has seen the face of evil, and it sees that face in mine. I detonated its brethren, and though I may have forgotten just how many traps I'd set or how many deer I'd killed, these details were remembered for me. And there's only one more act to play out. The deer snorts and steps into the roadway.
Arcane Denial
Argivian Find
Disempower
Enlightened Tutor
Generous Gift
Memory Lapse
Mystical Tutor
Spy Network
Submerge
Swords to Plowshares
Maybe I've been too harsh about deer. Maybe people are right, that we should try to find a way to harmonize with nature. Give up our dominion over the world as humans and willingly disempower ourselves for the greater good of the earth and all her creatures. Or, maybe that's a load of bullhonkey and next time I should use a flamethrower.
I see the deer ahead of me, and there's little time to react. Never slam on your brakes when there's a deer in your path. Never swerve. Just brace, and continue through. And if you have the means, drive an oversized pick-up truck that gets 15 miles per gallon.
Lands
I squeezed my eyes together a few seconds before impact. But the impact never came. I could hear nothing, though that might be from having the windows of my truck closed and the radio on near full-blast listening to my favorite political commentary podcast and what they were deliberating. That's why I didn't hear the gravel truck traveling northbound vaporize the deer before it could step into my path.
Adarkar Wastes
Ancient Den
Ancient Tomb
Buried Ruin
Command Tower
Darksteel Citadel
Hallowed Fountain
15 Islands
9 Plains
Razortide Bridge
Seat of the Synod
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
The rest of the drive to work, I thought about what lesson I should glean from this. I'm just smart enough to know that there is a lesson here, buried somewhere in deer viscera. But I'm also just stupid enough to give up on trying to learn it at the first sign of difficulty. I could try to learn from this, or I could stop at McDonald's on my way into work and get myself one of those Big Breakfasts I love. Get me some of those Hotcakes and a couple extra hashies.
If you'd been there, you would've run from that deer, too!
