By Fredric Brown
R. Austin Wilkinson was a bon vivant, man about Manhatten, and chaser of women. He was also an incorrigible punster on every possible occasion. In speaking of his favorite activity, for example, he would remark that he was a wolf, as it were, but that didn't make him a werewolf.
Excruciating as this statement may have been to some of his friends, it was almost true. Wilkinson wsa not a werewolf; he was a werebuck.
A night or two nights every week he would stroll into Central Park, turn himself into a buck and take great delight in running and playing.
True, there was always danger of his being seen but (since he punned even in his thoughts) he was willing to gambol on that.
Oddly, it had never occured to him to combine the pleasures of being a wolf, as it were, with the pleasures of being a buck.
Until one night. Why, he asked himself that night, couldn't a lucky buck make a little doe? Once thought of, the idea was irresistable. He galloped to the wall of the Central Park Zoo was trotted along it until his sensitive buck nose told him he'd found the right place to climb the fence. He changed into a man for the task of climbing and then, alone in a pen with a beautiful doe, he changed himself back into a buck.
She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. "No, no, a dozen times no!"
"Only a dozen times?" he asked, and then leered. "My deer," he whispered, "think of the fawn you'll have!"
Which went too far. He might have got away with it had his deer really been only a doe, but she was a weremaid- a doe who could change into a girl- and she was a witch as well. She quickly changed into a girl and ran for the fence. When he changed into a man and startes after her she threw a spell over her shoulder, a spell that turned him back to a buck and froze him that way.
Do you ever visit the Central Park Zoo? Look for the buck with the sad eyes; he's Wilkinson.
He is sad despite the fact that the doe-weremaid, who is now the toast of New York ballet (she is graceful as a deer, the critics say) visits him occasionally by night and, resumes her proper form.
But when he begs for release from the spell she only smiles sweetly and tells him no, that she is of a very saving disposition and wants to keep the first buck she ever made.
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