Deer Friends

There are some deer around our house and they are stealthy and quiet.  They go about their important eating business at night and hiding during the day and for big animals, they are fairly graceful.

We have English Ivy growing up some of the trees near the house and apparently it tastes pretty good, since there isn't one leaf growing up the trees to a certain height and then the leaves continue on up.  I don't want the ivy on the trees anyhow, so the deer just make it easier for me to find the stems and cut them near the base.  So in this instance certainly, the deer are my deer friends.

We had a cat named Ugly.  I know; it wasn't a very nice name.  My husband named him on a whim and he wasn't truly ugly, but he wasn't the most beautiful cat either.  Ugly was fearless and we found him or he found us as a grown cat.  He wasn't house material, since he had this need to mark his territory, so he had a garage house and seemed content there.  When I was outside, Ugly was usually in my lap, even if it was 90 degrees. 

One day as I looked out a bedroom window, an encounter played out before my eyes.  A deer, a good-sized one, had come right up to the basement patio and there was Ugly laying down some yards away closer to the house.  I suppose he was protecting our territory.  At any rate, the deer was trying in every way to let Ugly know that he wasn't happy.  First, he snorted mightily.  You could see his nostrils open wide and being as it was cooler the frosty air coming out.  He did this a number of times.  Then he took a front hoof and picked it up, then banged it down on the ground hard.  And he did this a number of times, plus some pawing of the ground too.  This looked ominous to me and I waited for Ugly to make some kind of evasive movement, but he just continued to lie on the ground.  After about five minutes of this, the deer seemed to spook and ran off into the woods.  Ugly won the stand-down!

My sister loves to plant her pots in Westlake, Ohio where she lives.  She loves picking out the most gorgeous combinations of plants for her pots and then watching them bush out over the summer.  However, she also has deer and it just seems a little crazy to see deer crossing Westwood Road where all you see are houses.  At least in my yard the deer look like they belong.  Well, on Tuesday night a deer came and ate the plants in one of her pots so she spent part of yesterday trying to fix it up.  Then she sprayed the anti-deer spray so it won't bother it again, and she was a little annoyed at herself for forgetting to spray in the first place.  For the deer, it must be like someone putting out a nice bowl of treats.  For me, like a big bowl of M & Ms. 

One evening when we were in the basement during a few winters ago, it just felt like we weren't alone.  And sure enough, a deer was staring right in the French door windows at us!!  We must kind of be like Ugly because it only happened that one time and never again. 

As long as we've lived here I've never seen a deer young enough to still have its spots.  If we could get into the thicker areas of the woods by our house, I'm sure we would encounter one at some point, but they don't move at all and they blend in perfectly with a sun-dappled wooded floor.  They also don't have any scent at all, and this is their protection against the predators that would claim them, like coyotes.  I've also never seen a coyote here, but they must be about.  Some of the neighbors have seen them.

So, my dear friends, it's time for me to sign off for today.  Hope you liked the posting about my deer friends.  We dodged the weather yesterday, amoeba-like shapes of green traveling across the radar screen, and we also dodged the hail and winds.  Thank you, Lord.