I open the door and throw the tennis ball out, hard. The Labrador Retriever bounds out the door and heads as fast as she can for the ball bouncing down the driveway. I follow her out the door. I hear a noise to my left, turn and look, and see six deer thirty yards away prancing down the driveway--a six-point buck, a two-point (yearling?) buck, three does, and a fawn. Clearly they had been hanging out under the trees close to the front door before the sudden appearance of the Lab sent them running. Still, they are not running too fast.
This happens everytime we go on vacation. The deer move in. For weeks after we come back, we drive up the driveway to see some doe--who has been sleeping under the lemon tree two yards from the front door--get to her feet and gallop away. We hear the tapping of their hooves on the deck at night. Large swathes of our carefully-planted flora are gone. One of them even took a chomp out of a prickly-pear cactus.
It will take a couple of months before they recognize that we are back for good, and start to give us the wide berth that they should give dangerous creatures like us huimans.
Posted by DeLong at August 17, 2002 04:16 AM | TrackBack