Going back at least ten years ago now, my wife Michelle and I we having lunch at one of our favorite restaurants in Door County, when I made what I intended to be an innocent observation of the artwork along one of the walls. It was a series of random images. "I don't get it", I commented. Michelle looked at the wall, looked at me, sighed a noticeably heavy sigh, shrugged her shoulders, "It's whimsy dear." If I recall correctly it was at this point that she added an eye-roll. She went on, "Even though you're very observant, you have no whimsy." Ouch. I don't know why that stung so much. Perhaps I am bogged down in an 'only-the-facts,- ma'am' world, but I think it is important to focus on the good, the true and the beautiful as reflected in reality. And so, in my defense, I give you the following facts . . .
Flightless Deer?
We have several apple trees and crab apple trees in
our back yard. About September, as the
apples ripen, the backyard becomes a favorite stop for several of the local
deer population. This past fall our group of
regulars included two large does and three fawns of the year. Usually about sunset, give or take 15
minutes, they would materialize out of the willow brush and make their way to
the big apple tree directly out back of our kitchen window. Almost nightly, either my wife Michelle or
myself – depending on who was making dinner, would call out to the other, “The
deer are in the yard.” Then we would both
watch them out the window for their 10 – 15-minute visit.
I didn’t mind when they focused on the windfalls – in
fact, I left the windfalls lay there for them.
But about the end of September or first part of October when I was
debating when I would pick the apples the deer would start rearing up on their
hind legs so they could reach the apples that were still hanging in the
tree. Part of me was intrigued with
watching them knocking down apples that were six and even seven feet high, and
part of me was thinking about the fact that they were cutting into this year’s
apple sauce supply. Well, if needed, we
could supplement our harvest with apples purchased from a local orchard, so I
let them have their fill.
Interestingly, this nightly event stopped quite
suddenly on the Thursday before deer gun season. The deer didn’t come that evening and we had
not seen a deer in the yard since. It
was if they completely disappeared, even though I knew that was not the
case.
When we had our first snowfalls in December the deer
tracks across the yard proved the reality that the deer were still around, but
they had obviously gone nocturnal. Tracks
still accumulated most every night and told their stories of deer passing
through, but unseen.
One recent night I woke up in the middle of the night
with a bit of a dry throat, so I headed out to the kitchen to get a drink of water. Having lived here now 31 years I know my way,
so I didn’t bother turning on any lights.
Also, we have a glass door going out the kitchen to the patio and it was
a nearly-full moon, so there was plenty of “seeing light” reflected off of the
snow. As I passed the patio door I
glanced out and saw a big doe ten feet away under one of the bird feeders.
In the moonlight she was perfectly visible, the white stripe over her nose and the white of her belly fur was clearly visible. I could see the steam of her breath jetting out her nostrils. Maybe she caught some of my movement because her head jerked to attention and she focused her eyes and ears right at me. The darkness and perhaps some moonlight glare on the patio door glass hid me well enough so that the doe soon went back to licking what birdseed she could get from the bird feeder.
It’s a
good thing that these birdseed-eating deer don’t become what they eat or
perhaps they would be able to fly about the yard at night, and they would leave
no tracks at all to betray their midnight visits.
I got my drink and returned to the patio door in less
than a minute. The doe had
vanished. I expect she walked away, but
perhaps . . .
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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