dearheart

FALLEN GARDENS TRAILER 2011 from Mike McKinlay on Vimeo.


This is the latest nature video from Mike McKinlay. Mike has a hand in a lot of different pies, as his website will attest. He has a knack for creating documentaries that appeal to very different audiences. Previous nature documentaries have focused on crows, herons and apparently a very early project centered around a ground squirrel colony. He has also done a series of shorts for the Pacific Coast Wildlife Fund.
Fallen Gardens has such a tongue in cheek sinister quality which is so successful because it is about deer. One of natures most gentle creatures, certainly no threat. Not personally at least.

In Second Nature, his treatise on gardening, Michael Pollan describes the difference between the damage done in his garden by a woodchuck and doe "[The woodchucks] devour a crop systematically, whereas a doe--nervous, and possessing perhaps a more developed sense of shame--will nibble a plant here, snip a shoot there, and then, startled by a falling leaf or something equally perilous to a two-hundred-pound mammal, dash off before her meal is done." Although perhaps the residents of this specific neighborhood would disagree.

And deer really do seem to be symbols of serenity and gentleness. Perhaps it is and subconscious association with Bambi.

Both photos of 'Bambi' courtesy of Hope Images


Or perhaps not.