Blank Generation

If you're like me, when you see a pile of jewel boxes (hard to use that phrase with a straight face, but there it is—the italics don't do much to soften the blow) that someone has discarded after realizing that their apartment was stuffed with the things and all they actually needed were the discs, you pick them up and take them home. The things cost as much as blank discs and they come in handy when sending music or data through the mail. Of course you can't know what the previous owner was doing with (or to) the boxes, so it's best to fumigate them once you're back in your crib. Certain albums tend to collect more cooties than others. Swab a Laurie Anderson box and it'll always come out sterile. But if you find a GG Allin booklet still in the plastic, best to drop that one directly in a bucket of bleach.

Natural enough, right? But who would have thought that Bambi would have a similar fear of germs, as one local paper reported yesterday? A cub reporter followed a horned beast into the woods and found it sterilizing a small pile of jewel boxes. His editor baulked at the headline. How could he be sure of the species? Eventually, though, he gave in.

• "Deer Gases AC/DC CD Cases," agreed?