One morning, around daybreak, I was riding my unicycle on the trails at a local park (It’s okay, it’s a mountain unicycle. I haven’t owned a street wheel in years) and I rounded a bend up a hill, startling a few deer.

The females ran like… well, like deer, of course.

But the Buck.  The Buck just stood his ground and made a sound I’m not accustomed to deer making around me.  He “wuffed”, or something like it.  A lot of air moved through his head, that’s all I know about the sound.

It was then that I conceived of a unicycle (and the cheap, yet dangerous, spiked pedals I used) as a weapon.

I didn’t think I could outrun that buck, nor outride him.  And maybe it was mating season, when bucks feel the need to protect their females, or just randomly kick somebody’s ass.  I wanted to know what sort of weapon could hold off a buck.  I decided that I could get enough work done with that unicycle, if wielded properly, to consider it a weapon, even if it wouldn’t be a unicycle any more once it had been a weapon for a minute or two.

The buck turned and left before anything was put to the test.

But you can thank him for the train of thought that led to today’s cartoon.