Velvet

Wonders of traditional medicine...and its consequences.

It is traumatic for a ten-year-old boy to see an animal shot and killed. Well, not exactly killed, but more like tranquilized before his eyes. My father is standing proudly with his tranquilizer-dart gun in his hands, in galoshes in the mud, in the middle of the fenced “deer farm” area in a rural, mountainous region of still developing South Korea.

The smell of dirt and s**t, the sweat of men and the beasts all mingling together is hard to take. Inside the fence, the beasts had trampled all the grass long ago. There are some other grown ups behind my father just as nervous as the deer, which are huddled together in the corner of the fence with their bewildered eyes. Yes, deer in headlights is a very accurate description here. The sight is an animal rights activist’s worst nightmare. It’s overcast and chilly November afternoon. It is snowing. Or it might just have been fuzzy deer fur in the air, I can’t recall.

My father, a failed businessman from the city, started the farm. Just how my father got the idea of herding undomesticated live animals for their antlers is a total mystery to this day. But he loved nature. And he loved animals. In our home in Seoul, we had a chicken coop in the garden, countless dogs, a half dozen birdcages and an incubator for the eggs. Our neighbors never liked us for obvious reasons.

I was a city kid and I dreaded the trips to the country. I admit that there were fond memories: collecting ripened melons and strawberries, fishing, watching rainstorms roll over the distant mountains... But they were always eclipsed by more traumatic events: stepping on a broken beer bottle, being attacked by mosquitoes, mauled by a foot tall rooster, witnessing a female mantis the size of your fist eating its counterpart, poison ivy, near drowning in a watering hole, and a fallen deer’s blank stare with a tranquilizer dart in his rear.

Antlers. Not the ones that hang prominently on the wall in some hunter’s house. Velvet. Deer antler velvet is the soft covering that deer antlers have before they turn bony. Antlers are organs of bone, which regenerate each year from the heads of male deer. It’s been in old traditional Chinese medical books as far back as two thousand years as beneficial in a wide range of health issues. It is said to be effective as an immune stimulant, anti- aging, pro-growth agent and also known as an aphrodisiac.

So the wealthy city folks paid my father a lot of money to take down those deer with tranquilizer darts and saw off the fuzzy antlers, and grind them and mix them with strong alcohol so they could down it without tasting whatever it is supposed to taste. Gruesome business? Yes. But I was saved from witnessing the process. I was busy throwing up behind a shack when it all took place.

I knew things didn’t go as planned whenever my father brought some deer meat back to the house in Seoul. It might have been mom’s cooking (she was a career woman, not a housewife), but somehow the lean venison always tasted like medicine and it made us sleepy.
I was a sickly kid. I had a bad heart. I was always cold. And I wet the bed. So my father insisted that I take the velvet. It is that cold November afternoon and it might be snowing. Trembling in fear with an upset stomach, I try to get up, leaning against the rusted tin wall of the shack. I concentrate on the yellow earth in order to keep my eyes from crossing. I try not to step on the spiny chestnut husks strewn about the area. I hear my name. My father is calling me. The time has come.

I see over my father’s hunched shoulder a fallen deer in the muddy ground behind the fence, its nostrils flailing, its eyes pleading. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I’m not supposed to see that.
He hands me a shot glass full of red liquid. It smells like alcohol.

“Just chug it, in one gulp.” He says.
I hesitate.

“Come on, it’s good for you.”
Instead of taking the shot, I start to wretch, but nothing comes out. My stomach is totally empty. He sighs.

“Son, it’s expensive stuff. Not many people have this luxury.”

All eager eyes of the grown ups are on me as if I’m doing something important, like a tiny gymnast ready to do a double summersault at the Olympics. I take the shot glass from his hand gulp it down while holding my nose. I cough. My throat is burning. My stomach is burning. I must look like a little vampire, coughing little coughs. Cheers and pats on the back. I win gold.

The rest is history. I can’t remember ever getting a cold or flu in the wintertime. I never skipped a class in elementary, middle and high school years. I have little medals to prove it. Hardly ever called in sick when I got older too. Amazing, right? Well, it’s not all that happily-ever-after. I sweat a lot. I mean, tons. Summertime is my enemy. I can’t eat spicy food because I sweat like a sauna. I can’t do physical work without getting soaked. I get clammy hands. I have to shower at least twice a day.

I don’t know why I didn’t refuse that shot glass full of minced deer velvet and blood and alcohol. I could’ve run away (to where, I don’t know). Or I could’ve told off my father how inhumane and crazy the whole thing was. I guess it didn’t cross my mind then that I could never look at deer the same way again. I could’ve been a sick man all my life but look any deer in the eye without feeling guilty. I could’ve been wetting the bed but with a clear conscience. But I’m not. I’ve encountered a few deer since my childhood. Their presence, their blank stares make me sweat like hell.

Reviews

[Ani Ashford]

Wow! What a memory. Very vivid writing. Please keep writing about those childhood experiences. They bring a wealth of understanding not just about yourself, but about that situation in that culture.