Words from a Reader

The “Writing Life Stories” e-mails I receive are such treasures. As soon as I see there is one in my inbox, I read it immediately. I look forward to them and never know how they will touch me. They can be interesting, informative, humorous, and/or touching.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Where are my deer?

I am sad to see my deer are gone. I call them my deer, the three adults and three young ones less than a year old. Over the years the size of the herd varies, but the trail they walk past my window stays the same.

I wrote about Flag recently, the one youngster that dawdled along the way until he saw his mom had gone far up the mountain side. Then he took off like a scared rabbit. He reminded me of The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. 

For the past couple of weeks, I have only seen one deer – one of the young ones. Where are the others? It is hunting season. I know because I saw two photographs of big burly men in our local newspapers holding the dead heads of bucks they had proudly killed. 

I haven't seen any bucks in my deer herd, but I wonder if the does and young ones were shot. I know many of the people in this area eat the meat of the deer and it is no crueler than killing a cow for the beef. Still, I enjoyed the little herd passing by my window each day. Unlike people with gardens, I did not find them to be nuisances. 

On one snowy winter day, I caught them feeding in the snow. I made a shaky, amateur video and posted it on You Tube. You can see it by clicking on the link below.
 


3 comments:

  1. How very sad. I understand the idea of shooting animals for their meat, but I couldn't do it, not ever. I hope they are just elsewhere, but I fear the worst.

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  2. How fortunate you get to watch them out your window, love the video (amateur or not). I'm sorry most of them don't come by any longer, it would make me sad too. We don't often see deer around here, I think it's because we are high up and there's lots of dogs around.

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  3. DJan and Lise, thanks for taking time to visit here. I hope you both have a wonderful Christmas season.
    I appreciate your loyalty to this blog.

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