The good news deer

The temperature rose to 40 degrees today, which Northern Tier dwellers know is bad news. It means that once night falls, and freezing temperatures return, ice will be everywhere. So I went out to spill some ice-melt on the path between my back door and garage, walked across the alley to deposit the empty bag, and returned to my back yard to find a deer looking at me. Not with any alarm, I'd say, but with a certain amount of curiosity: "What are YOU doing here?

I said, "Hi, deer," and re-entered my kitchen, just in time to see mom's two six-month-olds leap the front fence and join her in shoving snow around, looking for grass.

But unlike other days, the mother grew restless quickly, and in a matter of minutes retraced her steps, made the simple jump over my relatively low front fence, and wandered off across the street.

What's cool is that both of her two kids had no adventures. They followed, jumping that fence with no false starts. They're learning! I last saw the family hopping the (really) low fence into the back yard of my neighbor across the street. They disappeared around a corner, doing the urban deer thing.