Day player

Who uses it: TV and movie actors, directors and producers
What it means: An actor who is hired for a single day's work on a film or show. Day players are one step up from extras, because sometimes day players have lines. Also, unless a day player is officially released at the end of the shooting day, he or she comes back the next day.
How to use it: To describe a temporary worker.

Ah, back to Standard Time. I love it, because I get an extra hour of sleep; I hate it, because it means that sun will set at 4:30 this afternoon. I have written before about the movement to put Maine on Atlantic Time, which would basically give us Daylight Savings all year round. I have mixed feelings about it, because I'd rather wake up to sunlight than have the extra hour at the end of the day -- but ask me again in about a week.

Deer hunting season started this weekend. I'm not a hunter, so the details of Maine hunting laws are beyond me, but I do know that the state bans hunting on Sunday.

"Are hunters allowed to bait deer?" I asked Anna a couple of weeks ago. One of the major issues on last year's ballot was the question of whether hunters could bait bears; they can, and voters upheld that permission. I asked about deer because the Agway store in Farmingdale was advertising a sale on deer feed.

"No," Anna said, "People actually feed the deer, through the winter."

"That is the stupidest thing I ever heard," I said.

Don't get me wrong; I am as sentimental about animals as anyone you know. (Okay, maybe not as sentimental as anyone you know.) But putting out feed for deer doesn't help them, in the long run; it merely encourages population growth, when the population already outstrips the food available in nature.

Nature is not a Disney park. It's harsh and ruthless, and humans should only interfere when we know we're doing some good.

Dizzy thinks I should do him some good by taking him down to the river, so we're off. I wonder what he'd do if he ever saw a deer in real life. Probably best not to make that experiment.