Tuesday, December 6, 2022

SANTA AND HIS . . . MULE DEER? – DAY 6

Mike and I were awake early this morning. I got up at 6:45, and he decided to read in bed for a while. I had been up for five minutes when I heard him calling me.

“There’s a deer looking right at me through the window,” he said, laughingly.

So, I approached the window, and a sweet-faced mule deer doe looked me in the eye from two feet away as she munched on our euonymus hedge. I happened to have my phone with me, so I took her picture.



But wait! She wasn’t the only one. She was accompanied by nine friends! Three or four were munching nearby while others were more wary and had stepped away to wait, watching with curiosity.



I decided to quietly open the front door in an effort to get a better photo of the herd, and I think they would have tolerated that, but just then a dog barked, and that sent them prancing up the street with that peculiar mule deer bounce.

We often see this mule deer herd when we walk Bess in the afternoons, and I see evidence of their munching in the yard. But an “up close and personal” experience is a rare treat (if you can call it a treat).

Here in town, which is described as a rural area, we see mule deer, but at the farm, we see whitetail deer with the occasional mule deer passing through. Of course, reindeer fly through the frosty air on Christmas Eve, but we usually don't see them because we're asleep. KW

2 comments:

Becky said...

Maybe they WERE Santa's reindeer. Peeking in to see if you're being good. Did one of them have a red nose? :)

Kathy said...

Of course! Why didn't I realize they were Santa's reindeer?! And the one looking in the window was Rudolph wearing a cap on her nose. She was assertive enough to be Santa's lead reindeer.

They were a band of females, though. That's a little difficult to explain.