QUOTE : Yesterday she had been wondering about deer and their antlers: Somebody must understand, but she did not, how the antlers knew, each successive year, that they must grow more points or branches than the previous year, the old pair having been shed after the rutting season. Was it some sort of hormone, which didn't get broken down but just accumulated season after season in the maturing stag? All she knew about antlers was that the blood supply was in the velvet. It was said that squirrels ate fallen antlers for the calcium and other minerals. That was why you didn't find them all over the place in these Brookline woods. Probably tasted a little salty, crunchy like the bones of quail. Perhaps she should get her mother to serve platters of thin-sliced antlers at the wedding lunch tomorrow, as hors d'oeuvres. If antlers were nutritious, perhaps horn was beneficial after all, rhinoceros horn, for example. Except that horn was keratin- like toenails, not bone- like skull.