I’m so stuffed up, this rabbit tastes like cardboard

That howling? Coyotes celebrating a low pollen count

Sure, it’s allergy season, but you probably won’t die from it.

Because you’re human. You can take Claritin. Up to 10 mg every 24 hours for what feels like the rest of your life.

Actually, you can maybe finally lay off the Claritin at the sign of that first hard frost, probably October.

Although there is that little matter of possible kidney or liver damage from too much of the stuff. “Ask your doctor,” I would say, because should I be dispensing medical advice in the Ipswich Local News? No. Do I want to hear from your lawyer? No. Especially if the letter says anything about “wrongful death.”

Of course Claritin is not your only option. There’s always cetirizine, fexofenadine, levocetirizine; or consider fluticasone, triamcinolone, or budesonide. Maybe a little ketotifen or olopatadine. My feeling is, if ChatGPT recommends it, you should seriously consider it. But “ask your doctor.”

And we haven’t even begun to talk about saline nasal rinses and sprays. “Ask your doctor.”

You could otherwise stay indoors and keep your windows closed on high-pollen days. Stop being such a penny-pincher; turn on the AC.

If you have to go outside, wear a mask, goggles, and ideally a complete hazmat suit. When you come back in, take off your pollen-encrusted clothes and wash them. (Do not dry them outdoors on a clothesline. That would be dumb. They will just get pollen all over them again.)

So many options! Thank goodness we’re human.

The deer, sad to say, have no such options. They can’t even get Claritin, which is over the counter.

Yet they’re suffering this allergy season. Don’t tell me they’re not. I see what’s happening out there. My security cameras provide the evidence.

Last night, coyotes arrived as usual, with two obvious objectives: to find food — including deer, especially in springtime — and to use my backyard as a toilet.

They’re misinformed, apparently, because everyone knows that the scent of coyote waste puts deer on red alert. They smell what the coyotes leave behind, and they skedaddle.

If the coyotes were a bit more sophisticated, they would do their business in a secluded location set aside for such a foul purpose — a coyote commode in the conifers, perhaps. Then they would find greater numbers of warm, juicy deer cluelessly wandering about in the heart of coyote territory.

But no. Coyotes got no class. They go wherever they are when they feel like going, and then wonder why there’s no venison on the menu.

During allergy season, however, things change.

It’s clear that the deer can’t smell anything, because my security cameras show the coyotes relieving themselves and then, only minutes later, the deer meandering through the same space, blithely munching the same vegetation that the carnivores so recently contaminated. Which grosses me out.

Wherever the coyotes may have trekked after leaving my property, all they would have to do is turn around and retrace their steps and they would find plenty of protein on the hoof.

So if the deer are so helpless, with their nasal passages completely stopped up, why don’t we observe tragic numbers of mauled Bambi carcasses and hordes of fat, satisfied coyotes?

I can only theorize that the coyotes — whose nostrils are even smaller than the deer’s — are suffering from allergies too.

There’s no helping these animals. It’s virtually impossible to hold down a coyote and administer Flonase. You can send a mobile veterinary swat team into the forest to administer allergy shots, but even if they’re offered completely free of charge, the deer just run away. They hate needles.

So it all comes down to luck. A coyote who can’t smell a dang thing happens across a deer who can’t smell a dang thing and it’s a footrace.

Whichever one took that “may cause drowsiness” Benadryl is gonna be sorry.