Oh, Deer

It’s a little early, but last week a doe strolled from one side of our cul de sac to the other. About thirty seconds later a little white spotted fawn on legs so spindly you wondered how they could carry him went as fast as he could to catch up with her. I’m glad we haven’t got much traffic on our dead end short street. The fawn didn’t hesitate to jump into the street and certainly wouldn’t have stopped for a car.

Later that same day, a clearly pregnant doe, wandered through the woods in our side yard stopping to munch a tuft of grass here and there. Usually, we don’t see the fawns until mid-August but Mother Nature has been running a little ahead all year so I’m not surprised. More than once we’ve been delightfully surprised by twins.

We discovered soon after we moved in that we had four legged neighbors who were used to being fed by the prior homeowner. Our house sets at the end of the street with woods on three sides and a stream at the bottom of the hill. When we first got here no one was on the far hill across the side yard. It was the ideal place for the deer and we even had wild turkeys.

For many years, we made a regular trip to the feed store to buy a fifty pound sack of shelled corn. It had to be shelled. Those were spoiled deer we inherited with the house. They didn’t know corn came on a cob. And they were a wee bit demanding! One doe in particular would go stand in the clearing under the bird house and wait to be fed. If she saw you watching her from the kitchen window she would paw the ground with her front foot, bow her head twice and snort. We decided that meant “Get your butt out here and feed me” in native Alabama deerspeak.

We were well trained. We’d go across the deck, down to the garage and get a pitcher full of corn. When they heard the garage door go up, the whole herd came out of the woods because they thought it was chow time. Boy, did they look confused and a little put out with us when we were just going some where in the car. They would stand and watch us drive up the drive way in disbelief until we were out of sight.

We learned that having corn means mice will appear to snatch up any that you dribble when you’re scooping it out of its sealed container. Some mice took to storing corn kernels in the wheel well of my husband’s car. Having mice means your attract snakes–everybody’s got to eat. The evening I ran into a snake on the deck on the way to the garage I screamed until my brave husband got the shovel and wacked its head off. It was colored like a copperhead but it had a spoon shaped head instead of a triangular one. It was an Alabama pine snake. He never should have come on my deck!

We stopped feeding the deer shelled corn. Of course they still ate every flowering plant I tried to put out, but they did that even when we were feeding them corn. They even ate a knock out rose bush to a stick out of the ground, thorns and all. They left the gardenia bush alone because they don’t like waxy leaves and the fire ant mound at its base proved to be a mighty deterent. More houses have been built in the area and that cut down on deer traffic too. We still get a few like the ones last week. I wanted to get a picture but I wasn’t quick enough so here’s one of a fawn from several years ago.