OH DEER

The bear and deer grabbed the gun and gave the hunter a taste of his own venison.

What’s so funny about this? This cartoon might have been funnier if I could have dressed either the bear or the deer as a doctor to illustrate “medicine”. But before we get to that, you’re probably wondering what the bear’s doing in the cartoon in the first place? After all, it doesn’t have much if anything to do with the pun. Hunters, at least in the U.S. mostly go after deer; bears, not so much. For this particular illustration, if you’ll pardon another idiom, the tail is wagging the dog. While the original joke had no bear, the cartoon creation software I use happened to have this bear with a rifle. Here’s the thing. I needed to show how animals, preferably one or more deer, turned the tables on a hunter. In other words, instead of being the hunted, I wanted the deer to be the hunters. I looked for deer and I looked for a rifle, but none of the pictures were suitable. Finally I found the bear with the