My life has been busy, hectic and stressful for the last few months. One of my problems has been that I haven’t had time to go find interesting things in nature to share.
But a wonderful thing about nature is that if you are patient, and observant, sometimes it comes to you.
The dogs were going berserk at something in the backyard yesterday morning. Usually, this is just a person next door. We try to quiet the dogs down and bring them in, because nobody likes to be the subject of a barking frenzy.
But when I looked out the back door, I saw what they were barking at.
It was a small family of mule deer who have been living in the neighborhood this fall. We’ve had deer in the backyards before, but it surprises me that they are in backyards this early in the season.
The buck is looking back at the doe, who is out of the picture to the left.
As the dogs continued their mad barking, I saw that there were a doe and a yearling in the next-door yard, as well.
The dogs refused to quiet down. I was going to go shoo them inside, but at this point, the buck turned to look at the dogs, his head lowered a little.
Very deliberately, the young buck walked up to the fence to consider the dogs. This concerned me, because I know that deer can be aggressive when they feel threatened. What puzzled me was that the buck shouldn’t feel threatened, because he could walk away at any time, and the dogs couldn’t follow. And he knew it.
At this point, the dogs barking changed a little, and I noticed Tegan doing play bows. This was predictable. Tegan loves to play. She does play bows to the vacuum sweeper. Because she was bouncing around behind lots of yard stuff, I wasn’t able to get a shot of her doing this.
With the fence safely between them, the buck watched the dogs, unsure of what to make of them.
Three young animals of two different species that are normally antagonistic to each other considered each other for a few minutes.
But the buck decided he had seen enough, and ambled back to the doe and yearling.
And then, he effortlessly jumped the chest-high fence and moved on.
Nature redeems, once again.
I can go back to dealing with my problems, a little less frustrated.
Thank you for sharing, Amy. This made my day a little bit better!
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I’m so glad I could brighten your day! You do a good job of that, too. Stay positive!
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Wow! Those are great action shots. Well done. Yes, Nature does accommodate at the most opportune times it seems. Rut season is starting and bucks become quite aggressive. When my brother lived in Parker last year, several small dogs were killed by aggressive deer. Stay safe.
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Somehow, I was thinking rut for deer was the same time as for elk — September-ish. But I knew it was a little weird for an animal to walk towards two dogs that were barking like crazy. Glad I listened to my warning bells. And glad the buck didn’t decide to come over our fence!
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