One of life’s supreme ironies is while we all think we’re the most intelligent animal, still we barely understand each other.

I should amend that to we barely understand each other before the fact.

A perfect example is the nameless, faceless work-a-day nobody who no one takes special notice of – till he hits the front page . And like most front page news, his ain’t good.

Maybe he dynamited the reservoir, took pot shots at a school bus, burned down a convent, or did something else equally heinous.

And what then?

I’ll tell you what – suddenly everyone who had barely a passing acquaintanceship with him weighs in on his character.

“A nut, a dangerous nut,” says the paperboy. “He didn’t tip, neither.”

“Never made eye contact. Who does that but someone who’s hiding something?” says the counter guy in the diner.

And my favorite: “He seemed like a normal kid … but if you looked closely in his eyes you could see, even then, there was something wrong, something really wrong, with him.” That’s from his second-grade teacher.

That no one had even the slightest clue he was a homicidal maniac till after he became Le Lunatique du Jour seems irrelevant. They said he was a nut, and clearly he was a nut. Can’t argue with that. That none of them mentioned his lethal proclivities before he did his thing is lost in the shuffle. In fact, no one even refers to it. Then again, they’re only doing what Jean Dixon did, and she copped a lucrative career from it.

The anthropomorphic Duh factor

As dismal as we are at understanding our own species, it’s far worse when it comes to others. It seems we rarely get beyond simpleminded anthropomorphism – giving animals human characteristics.

An oft-heard example: “We went to the movies, left Manson alone in the house, and he got so mad at us he ripped up the couch. We should never have given him that name, I tell ya.”

Pure anthropomorphism at it best.

First, vengeance is an exclusively human trait (and a most prevalent one at that). Dogs aren’t carrying out well-planned paybacks when they do that – they’re panicking.

Second, by nature, dogs are pack animals and den dwellers. So for one thing, they don’t like being alone.

For another, while being alone in a whole house might terrify them, they can learn to be comfortable in a crate. Maybe we wouldn’t like to be in a crate, but just to remind you, we’re not dogs. Crate them and they’ll probably just go to sleep. Certainly, they won’t shred your furniture.

And finally, odds are that even if you’d named him Mahatma, he still would’ve freaked out and chomped the sofa to pieces.

Truth be told, while I’ve always had cats and dogs, I don’t understand them. Take my latest canine addition, Daisy.

She’s smart, cute, sweet and sparky. She’s also 12 pounds of original sin. Among her other depredations, on occasion she chews up a book. But not just any book: She specializes in ’50s hardback detective novels – with covers. Why only them? I’ve no idea. I only know she likes Mickey Spillane’s works far more than I do.

So much for domesticated animals. But what do I know about wild ones? Even less, if that’s possible. But last week I picked up a few big pointers.

The beaten path,

not the beating one …

I was walking my dogs on Mt. Dewey as I do every morning. If you’ve never walked Dewey’s trails, you’ve missed one of the great treasures of My Home Town. There are lots of trails, big and small, and you can walk probably 5 or 6 miles without ever hitting the same trail twice. It’s a magical kind of place with a good variety of flora and fauna.

So there the dogs and I were, almost at the end of our walk. It was already in the 80s, we’d been walking about an hour, and all of us had slowed down considerably. Then, just as we were about to round the last bend before getting off the trail, the dogs went on Full Alert.

I know as much about my dogs’ ancestry as I do my own, which is to say nada. But whatever theirs is, it includes mutts that had great scent and hearing: If a deer is within a hundred yards of them, they know it, and they react. You know the scene -?straining at their leash, howling, trying to take off at warp speed.

I hauled the leashes in, holding them somewhat in place while trying to keep both my balance and temper.

We stumbled around the bend, and when we did, suddenly I was eye to eye, maybe 20 feet away from a buck – and not just any buck -?he was a beautiful eight-pointer.

Like every local, I’ve seen hundreds, maybe thousands of deer, mostly does and fawns. I’ve seen a few bucks, but not very many. And not only had I never an eight-pointer, I’d never seen one that close. And there was something else I’d never seen, which was a deer who had three dogs barking at it and didn’t run away.

Not only did he not run away, he didn’t look like he was about to, either. Instead, he just stood there, calm, cool and collected, staring straight at me. The only motion he made was chewing his cud.

I stood there, transfixed. I also did some instant Woodland Calculus:

Part one

I wanted to get out of the woods and go home, chill and suck down a giant iced tea. The fastest way to do that would be to keep on the trail and walk past the buck. My other choice was to turn around, backtrack on the trail, dragging three hyped-up hounds, and exit on the other side, sweatin’ my ancient tuchis off for at least another 10 minutes.

Part two

I was an out-of-shape, unarmed 70-year-old.

The buck was bigger than me faster than me, and more than a bit bugged by me and the hounds of the Baskervilles upsetting his leisurely post-breakfast cud. He also had hoofs, horns, and a heap of attitude: He was standing there and clearly was gonna keep standing there. And while he made no move toward me (yet), it was obvious if he got up a head of steam and a notion to do some inter-species butt-kicking, the only way I’d out of the woods would be in a body bag … or a blotter.

The answer

Another moment passed with us just eyeballing each other. Then, slowly, I backed away, around the turn whence I came, taking the longer – and safer – way back to the car.

I always did poorly in math, never getting above a D and all too often getting an F. But I’ll tell you this much: If there’d ever been a Regents exam for Woodland Calculus and I’d taken it that day, I would’ve scored an A+.