Close Encounters with the Deer

On November 24th, the day after Thanksgiving, I was headed to the bookstore to check on an employee when I noticed a huge buck in my neighbor's yard.

He let me take a few pictures of him, and there were also a couple of does. So I went over to our yard and shook our apple tree so the deer could have the last little shriveled-up apples of the season.

So the deer came over to eat the apples which the buck particularly liked. (We'll call him Woodrow.) One of the does was pretty tame and would come very close to me. (We'll call her Daphne.) When the apples were gone, I turned around and the doe was right behind me. I thought she was going to goose me in the rear. So I went inside and got a few carrots which she would take right out of my hand. The buck didn't care much for the carrots. Yes, I know I shouldn't feed the deer, and I promise I won't do it again, but I couldn't help myself.


Then, Daphne must have assumed that we were on a first name basis, so she drug the Halloween pumpkin from our front porch and started in on it. We hadn't carved it - it was just a solid pumpkin. She proceeded to tear it shreds and ate almost all of it in one go. She had her head down inside the pumpkin, just chowing down.

Woodrow made noises that sounded like creaking wood, and he seemed quite interested in the doe. At one point he started to bugle, and I went inside! I didn't want to get too close to his antlers.

By the way, our yard is covered in several inches of snow again. We may not see the grass again until April or May.