bad ass metal deer head

Meet our newest family member - John Deere*:

Never in a million years would I have thought that I'd ever have a deer head decorating my house.

Obviously, the taxidermied kind are completely gross. But I've found the recent trend of fake deer heads to be disturbing, too. Even the ceramic/cardboard kind are just copies of what? A dead animal's head mounted to the wall! Yuck.

So I really can't explain why I fell in love with this metal deer head while window shopping in St. Michaels the other weekend. Nor can I explain why this metal deer head is now hanging above my fireplace. Oh wait, yes I can - because it's a freakin' bad ass metal deer head and it's awesome.

Our attention was first caught by this metal moose head hanging on the outside of a cute art shop called Artisans of the World. We were intrigued, and while the moose is awesome, his red and green color scheme doesn't go with what we have going on in our house.

So we went inside and spotted this guy:

Larry: This is awesome. I kind of want it!
Me: Let's get it!

Now, Larry and I never make these types of spontaneous purchases, and when it comes to art, I'm so indecisive that my living room walls are still completely bare three years after buying our house. So I don't know what made it so easy for me to agree to drop the big bucks on this big buck. Oh wait, perhaps it was the fact that I had already had a few beers and Larry had had more than a few beers.

Whatever it was, within 5 minutes, the deer had been paid for and was under Larry's arm en route to the trunk of Bryan's car. He's made of recycled farm machinery and he will cut you. Seriously, Larry wants to put rebar caps on his razor-sharp antlers.

The next night we hung him above our fireplace. This process nearly resulted in divorce.

I googled "metal deer head" the other evening and found that the artist, The Steel Fork out of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania has an Etsy shop! Now I kind of want to fill my house with bad ass metal animal heads. (I realize that would be terrifying, so I won't. Bad Ass Metal Deer Head alone is likely to frighten small children.) How cool are the wolf, bear, steer, and...octopus? A bit creepy, but cool. Ok, the octopus is the stuff nightmares are made of, but I still kind of want to hang him in my dining room. Or above the toilet.

* I thought we should name him either John Deere or Uncle Buck. Larry prefers Uncle Buck, but that just gives me images of John Candy's head tacked to my wall...and that is creepy!