One of the latest racial charges against George Allen involves a deer head and a mailbox. Here’s how Salon.com reported it:

Shelton said he also remembers a disturbing deer hunting trip with Allen on land that was owned by the family of Billy Lanahan, a wide receiver on the team. After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. “He proceeded to take the doe’s head and stuff it into a mailbox,” Shelton said.

This is a truly bizarre anecdote. Allen denies it. Shelton is a Democrat (who is also a source of the N-word accusations). Lanahan, the one guy who could possibly confirm this story, is dead. Yet the claim is weirdly compelling. Who would invent such a tale? Well, as it happens, Shelton may have gotten the idea by reading an AP story earlier this year in his home state of North Carolina:

Hoke County, NC — Evelyn Matthews screamed when she opened her mailbox in southern Hoke County.
A tax bill? Worse, a deer’s head, stuffed into her mailbox.
Other parts of the animal were found packed into a second mailbox.
Turns out a teen committed the prank.