They pursued the gunman and arrested a 31-year-old New Castle man about an hour later, said, Lt. Adam Brams, the agency’s spokesman, reported today.

The incident unfolded about 9 p.m. Friday when a motorist hit the deer on Del. 9 near Rogers Manor and it got wedged into the car’s bumper and grill. The deer was still alive, and the motorist drove the car to police headquarters, where animal control agents from the Delaware SPCA tranquilized it. Brams said the officers and the animal control agents then removed the deer from the car and took it to the area of Quigly Farm to release it in its natural habitat. Officers stood by on a dirt road to make sure that when the deer awakened from the tranquilizer that it was not injured and able to run off into the woods.

As it did, the officers noticed a white sports utility vehicle pull up on the shoulder and then heard a gunshot followed by a whizzing sound over their police car, Brams said.

Thinking the gunshot was meant for them, the officers took off after the van. They stopped the driver, identified as Victor L. Bryson, on Frenchtown Road near the Quigly Farm. A search warrant was executed and police said they found two shotguns, 20 shotgun rounds, 3 spent rounds and night vision binoculars inside.

Bryson, of the 500 block of W. Ninth Street, was charged with two counts of reckless endangering, two counts of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited, possession of ammunition by a person prohibited and driving with a suspended license.

The bullet missed both the officers and the deer, Brams said. Police initially reported that Bryson told officers he was aiming at the deer. But this afternoon Brams said after speaking with the arresting officer, it wasn't clear what Bryson was shooting at. "The suspect, Victor L. Bryson, denied shooting a gun and did not confess anything to police," Brams wrote in a news release. Bryson is being held in Young Correctional Institution in lieu of $34,000 bail.

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There's an old country proverb that I think applies here:

"You can't fix stupid."

In my nursing home ministry, I meet many people who are facing death. And like all of us, I also have to face such difficult inevitabilities with those whom I love. John Donne's English may be old, but his thoughts are eternal.

This is my play's last scene

by John Donne

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

  ^{I Corinthians 15:53} For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.

 ⁵⁴But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory.

 ⁵⁵"O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY?

O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?"

Funny what you come across. From my Navy years, I knew the term "scuttle" to mean a small opening or escape. (In Hawaii, we would say puka - "poo-ka.")  The related term "scuttlebutt" was sailor slang for gossip.



From my daughter's growing up years, I knew scuttle as Ariel's seagull companion from "The Little Mermaid."




Turns out the 'good old days' had a different term for the word. Here's an excerpt from a Time Magazine  discussion on sexual harassment, citing Helen Gurley Brown:

What's a girl to do when she encounters sexual harassment in the office? If she's a Cosmo girl, she apparently should think twice before becoming offended. Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and tireless doyenne of social advice, believes there's still a place for "sexual chemistry" in the workplace.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Brown fondly recalled working at a Los Angeles radio station during the late 1940s and early '50s. Her male co-workers, wrote Brown, played a "dandy game called 'Scuttle' . . . ((they)) would select a secretary, chase her down the halls . . . catch her and take her panties off. Nothing wicked ever happened."

According to the author, everyone enjoyed the pursuit and "no scuttler was ever reported to the front office. Au contraire, the girls wore their prettiest panties to work . . . Alas, I was never scuttled." Brown professed shock that modern girls would disagree with her notions of what constitutes a playful professional pastime.

Apparently, there is less bold variation of this game where men place bets on the color of the woman's panties, chase her and then flip up her skirt. I gather there are still working women who find that to be a "playful professional pastime."

At my workplace, the guy would be fired so fast he'd be on the street before the woman's skirt hem was back at her knees. But maybe that's just my work environment.

Whatever the case ... this brings a whole new definition to "Scuttle Butt."

Are there still places out there where "scuttling" would be considered a "playful professional pastime?"

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