Trick or Treat! (or, baby deer don't know when it isn't Halloween...)
So, this morning. Leaving the house for a breakfast out and some errands. I open the front door and turn back momentarily - and my husband says, "Don't let the deer in."
Don't let the deer in...?
I turn back around, and there they are, two young deer, not quite fawns (they've lost their spots) but certianly not full-grown, just standing there, maybe two steps away from me, looking at me expectantly - with a requisite degree of wariness but no fear and no skittishness and no obvious intent to run.
"Get one of the older apples," rdeck says, and I race into the house, quarter an apple which we have owned for some time and which was beginning to wrinkle a little, and race back out with the quarters. I toss them at the deer. The babies step forward, delicately, and start hoovering them up.
"There's that last little bit of the bread," rdeck says, after all the apples are gone and the deerlets are still standing there expectantly.
So I race back in (by this stage my cat is up in arms - INDIGNANT MEOW - why is everyone outside oohing and aaahing and I am IN HERE, AIN'T I, AND WHAT KIND OF FURRIN CUTENESS ARE YOU PLAYING WITH OUT THERE?!?") and grab the heel of sourdough bread that's lying there and chop it up into bitesized pieces (deer have VERY small mouths, we have found) and head back out there again.
They hoover it all up. One of them took a piece of food *from a human hand*. It was pretty amazing stuff.
Made my day, I tell you. It MADE MY DAY. I am still smiling.
Don't let the deer in...?
I turn back around, and there they are, two young deer, not quite fawns (they've lost their spots) but certianly not full-grown, just standing there, maybe two steps away from me, looking at me expectantly - with a requisite degree of wariness but no fear and no skittishness and no obvious intent to run.
"Get one of the older apples," rdeck says, and I race into the house, quarter an apple which we have owned for some time and which was beginning to wrinkle a little, and race back out with the quarters. I toss them at the deer. The babies step forward, delicately, and start hoovering them up.
"There's that last little bit of the bread," rdeck says, after all the apples are gone and the deerlets are still standing there expectantly.
So I race back in (by this stage my cat is up in arms - INDIGNANT MEOW - why is everyone outside oohing and aaahing and I am IN HERE, AIN'T I, AND WHAT KIND OF FURRIN CUTENESS ARE YOU PLAYING WITH OUT THERE?!?") and grab the heel of sourdough bread that's lying there and chop it up into bitesized pieces (deer have VERY small mouths, we have found) and head back out there again.
They hoover it all up. One of them took a piece of food *from a human hand*. It was pretty amazing stuff.
Made my day, I tell you. It MADE MY DAY. I am still smiling.