Friday, October 30, 2009

more on urban deer

Alison - I saw your comment on my blog about the injured fawn. The question is, should an answer come in an email like this, or on the blog, or in a "comment" responded to your comment? (Old guys are easily confused.) I guess I'll do both, although what both means remains uncertain.

Anyway, yes, the limping deer you photographed this summer was back. But here's more:

Today, that male with the skinny antlers, after taking a day off, once again lounged around my back yard all day, getting up now and then to munch on some grass, or hopefully test the taste of a dying lilac leaf, or snack on a bit of tender bark. Face it, the guy is a sponge. Then, about 4 p.m., as the buck was quietly chewing its cud, a herd of six deer, including the lame one, calmly crossed my front residential street, paraded along the south side of my house, crossed the alley, and started feeding on my neighbor's grass. One youngster, a buck with a couple of little antlers the size of pencils, stuck its nose through the gate into my back yard, staring at the reclining buck. The buck glanced back, over its shoulder, and pretended not to care.

But within a few minutes it stood, nibbled grass for a little longer, and then, from a standing start, leaped my back fence, landed in the alley, seemed to be heading north away from the herd, but then changed course, unable to avoid joining the other deer.

They chomped grass for a while, until suddenly my viewing turned into anthropology. My across-the-alley late-30-something neighbor, in a car driven by her similarly aged girl friend, pulled into the yard. Their car doors remained shut, no doubt because their back seat was filled with a couple of good-sized pooches. But the friend opened her driver's-side window and stuck out her cell phone, photographing (or filming) the deer. This went on for several minutes until another nearby neighbor banged out of his house and started banging stuff into his truck. The deer skittered over to the other side of the yard, stood still for a minute or two, and then somehow collectively decided to vamoose.

Just another day in urban-deer land. I see the need for authorities to cull Helena's deer herd. And the food goes to Helena Food Share, after all. But I hope my deer survive another year.

1 comment:

  1. I'm rooting for your deer too. Of course that's easy for me to do as I don't live in Helena. :)

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