Young deer angst

I'm finding that watching young deer, as opposed to the more majestic and savvy grownups, is the most interesting.

For instance, a family I've come to know (consisting of a mom and two six-month-old kids) was wandering my neighborhood late New Year's Day morning, and eventually mom and one of the kids leaped the fence into my back yard and hung out for some five hours. The other young deer ended up in the fully fenced yard immediately to my north - fully fenced except for a tall Victorian wrought-iron entry gate that almost filled the gate-way space.

When mom deer suddenly jumped my back fence and started grazing across the alley, the little deer in my neighbor's yard got nervous first. It started roaming the fenced boundaries, looking for a jumping point. But, because of the lay of the land and the limbs of the trees, the leaps out would be difficult compared to the leaps in. The young deer checked out the wrought-iron gate, and the little space available to bypass it, and gave up several times. The space, a few inches, was wide enough for a cat, but not for a deer. But the little deer got desperate, and pushed itself through! (The gate may look imposing, but it is just sitting there, unanchored to the ground, able to be tipped.) The young deer stood outside the fence for a few moments, seemingly thinking, and suddenly leaped into a run. It rounded my house, rushed through the passageway between my house and that of my neighbor to the south, and joined it's mom across the alley.

Meanwhile, the young deer still in my own yard had been becoming more and more frantic. It obviously wanted to rejoin its mother, and was looking for a way out. It took a couple runs at the back fence, but gave up each time. (It apparently rejected the lower fence into the front yard, which was in the opposite direction from its mom. It seemingly couldn't visualize the way around the house.

But when it saw its sibling dash westward toward the alley and its mother beyond, the deer in my yard dropped all tentativeness. It raced toward the back fence and leaped it like a champ.

Hey, show and tell, middle-school cliques, high-school angst, are a bitch. But try being a young deer.