Tag Archives: deer

We All Scream For Ice Cream

27 May

A week or so back I found a freezer-burned carton of ice cream on the bottom shelf – Pumpkin Pie flavor, if that gives you any idea how old the stuff was.

I took it out back and left it beside the dish we use to feed the foxes. The carton was gone the next day;  not surprising, as they will frequently carry off plastic carry-out trays or the like to eat at their leisure. Today I had a bunch of stale bread to toss out to the critters – deer will eat bread, as do the birds and squirrels – and as I was coming back I noticed a flash of orange in one of the trees.

Apparently the raccoons had taken the carton away and climbed the tree to eat the ice cream in peace and quiet. The tree is about thirty feet from the dish so I wasn’t likely to see it there, and it was also on the back side of the tree. The carton was in the mulberry tree on the far right of the photo, about four feet off the ground. (We feed the foxes in an old angel food pan, dropped over a stake pounded into the ground. Food dishes are among the things they have carted off, and we got tired of searching for their dish.)

Can’t blame them.  I feel the same way about ice cream. Keep your paws off!

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Bucky

29 Oct

For the last few weeks, just at dusk, we have seen a large buck either in our back yard or just at the edge of the woods around us. We put out deer corn in the “back forty” (the power company right of way behind us) to encourage him and any friends he might bring along.

The last day or so, he’s been missing.

Yesterday morning, The Squire and Blazer went out to collect the newspaper and found the deer in the woods on the other side of the stream. Ninety acres of state-owned forest behind us, and Bucky had to cross the road.  He’d managed to drag himself a good distance  from the street, and was lying on his side, with his head resting on a log.

Right now, he is perfuming the neighbourhood, poor thing. I kinda wish the vultures will find him soon.

I think the thing that disturbs me most about deer – and mice – is that they don’t close their eyes when they die. They just lie there and stare at you accusingly.

Bucky

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Never a Camera…

16 Jun

The Squire went out to the barn late this afternoon to feed the raccoons and foxes. He heard a rustling noise and stopped walking, but crept up so he could see beyond the barn, into what we call “the back f0rty”.  (Actually, the electric company right-of-way.)

There was a young buck and a fox frolicking in the clearing, play bowing and chasing each other around. The buck saw The Squire and stopped, stared at him and stomped one foot, which is usually a warning sign that “one of us is going to get hurt”. When my husband didn’t move, the deer apparently figured he was harmless, so he sort of shrugged, turned around and walked back into the woods. The fox didn’t notice my husband, and after his  playmate left he sat up on his haunches, with his back to The Squire, and turned his head his way and that, apparently seeking some movement in the tall grass that would indicate a stray rabbit or a squirrel for supper. After a few moments, he turned his head far enough to spot The Squire. He looked at my husband for a second or two, with this “How long have you been here?” expression, and then bolted across the stream and up the hill.

Never a camera when you need one.

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Good King Who?

20 Feb

As the weather has warmed up and the snow has settled on itself, there are places in the yard covered with a thin layer of ice, and still some pretty deep white stuff underneath. The Squire and I have been out to the “back forty” any number of times – to feed the foxes, carry out the compost, or put down corn for the deer.

There are still places where the snow is over my boot tops, so I do try to stay in the footprints already out there.  I don’t know if I am trying to go too fast, or am just innately clumsy, but I still manage to stumble and stagger, missing the existing prints, and crashing through the crust to make my own.

This morning I went out to collect the dishes we use to feed the deer, and I managed to make a new print,  and pulled my foot out of my right boot. Standing on my left foot, trying to get my right tootsies back into the boot, and then fell flat on my back in the snow.

Innately clumsy would be my best guess.

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Oh, Deer!

16 Jan

I always take Blazer with me when I go to the Wednesday morning knitting group. Yesterday, he needed to take a walk in the woods, and I found a very dead deer just inside the tree line. The Squire called one of the other members to see about hauling or moving the carcass, which was done this morning.

The deer had been shot with an arrow, on church property, just beside the foundation of the original church. The poor animal had managed to travel the fifty or so feet to the woods, and then simply laid down and suffered, arrow still embedded, until he died. No effort made to find him – and he was in plain sight – and put him out of his misery.

This is totally unacceptable from a humanitarian standpoint, and it is not appropriate use of our property. Private property, thank you very much. We don’t mind people walking their dogs, and the path to the river cuts across the far corner of the lot; you may park there any time but Sunday morning.

But you don’t kill things and leave them here. Got that?

Yeesh.

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