Yesterday, Anna Smith, this blog’s occasional Vancouver correspondent, sent me a newspaper article about a psychopathic deer stalking local people and occasionally kicking their dogs.

One resident explained: “At least five women dog walkers other than me and two men have been stalked and chased relentlessly by the Psycho Doe. This doe is the child of the previous psycho doe who was killed by a car last fall, finally, after years of terrorizing us. This one exhibits the same learned behaviour of stalking. There are other does with fawns around who don’t act like this.

The local Council’s Conservation Service suggests carrying a “baseball bat or a ski pole” for self-protection. An online video Tweet attempts but fails to show the deer acting psycho.

“Is this normal in Vancouver?” I asked Anna Smith.

I got this reply:

Luckily we don’t have many deer to terrorisé us in the Downtown East Side. Just bears, dogs and people mostly. Occasionally, a coyote in the dead of winter.

Yesterday I spied a man walking down Main Street with two dogs. One was a large grey patchy hound, strolling in step with his master. The other was tiny and bouncy, chattering and spitting in a most un-dog-like manner. Then I realised it was a baby racoon, so I quickly stepped out of the way of all three of them.

But, at work and on the street, every day is a surprise here.

And, through all this, The Cheese Man persists, nondescriptly, passing swiftly through the rowdy crowds, murmurring intermittently: “Cheese….”. 

When I hear him say it once, I look about and wonder where he’s gone, but he has melted into the crowd faster than a Gruyère. By the time he says “Cheese” for the third time, it’s almost imperceptible. 

He has figured out the correct rhythm of repeating the word, like an occulting maritime signal light. It gives him time to scan for the police. In the moments of silence between, you begin to doubt if you heard him at all.

He appears at random and nobody knows his name. He’s a shadowy figure. When you ask around, some people are in the know. Others have never encountered him and are surprised to hear of his existence. Naturally, he doesn’t do interviews or Instagram.

I have no photo of him. It can be dangerous taking photos around here. 

I was photographing trees on Alexander Street last week, pointing my phone up to the tree tops when, from across the street, a fat middle-aged man started yelling at me: “SO! You’re the MEDIA! Go on, take all photos you want! You CHILD PORNOGRAPHER! You CANT fool ME. I know what you’re up to!”

I saw Brandy at breakfast this morning. 

She’s the grouchy 86 year old lesbian Cockney lady who drives a new SUV and was accidentally placed in a newly-built city-owned housing project for the poor in a tiny apartment with no room for her grand piano. She can’t have a Besenji dog and she’s afraid to use the bathtub because it is HUGE and she is SMALL and thinks, if she gets into it, she won’t be able to get OUT. 

She is not poor but they haven’t found proper housing for her and she doesn’t want to live in Chilliwack with her postmaster son, because out there in Chilliwack it’s SO BORING because it’s rural and nobody out there TALKS to anyone and she can’t put up with THAT.