Deer In The Mist

I promised to tell you the strange story of my encounter with the deer I've been showing you for the last couple of days, so that's just what I'm going to do. Maybe I should have done this first, but that wouldn't have been as much fun, now would it? Well anyway, here we go!

I had just walked to the edge of the meadow, and I didn't really expect to see much of anything here this early in the morning. I thought I'd go ahead and take a few pictures since it was so misty here. Maybe I could get a few nice ones together for a small post for my blog, even though it was kind of hard to see. After I had taken several shots, I noticed something big moving in the meadow.

It was a deer, and it was walking towards me! How could I have missed it before? Then a little to the left I saw four more, and some of them were young ones! I thought to myself that this must be one of the luckiest things that had happened to me yet! I was very excited as they came forward. That's when I began to realize that they were walking right towards me, but they weren't stopping!

As the deer moved closer, they were looking right at me. My mind began to race, and I lowered my hand that held my camera. The deer slowed to a stop less than thirty feet away from me. The one on the left lowered its head at me, and then back up as if to tell me to back off. Then the one on the right repeated this action.

My courage was beginning to leave me, but I quickly grabbed it in a stranglehold and stood my ground. These two deer were making threatening motions at me, even though they were the ones that moved towards me. I had done nothing to them! My stubbornness took over, so I made the same threatening head bobbing motions right back at them. What would happen now?

I checked around for a small tree to hide behind just in case one of them decided to charge me. But instead of making them angry, my actions seemed to have the opposite effect on them. They decided it might not be a fight they wanted, but they still weren't afraid. They made no more threatening motions, but they didn't move away either.

Deciding that we could coexist in the meadow, the deer went back to grazing. There's plenty for them to eat here, and they weren't going to give this up so easily. Even so, every once in awhile one of them would look up at me to make sure I didn't try anything evil. I was busy taking pictures of them though, and they didn't seem to mind that too much.

While all of this was happening, the little ones had disappeared into the background. I lost track of them during the short tense situation. I guess they all knew exactly what to do if things became dangerous. None of them were very afraid of me, but they were just taking normal precautions. I was definitely not going to make too many quick moves. After awhile I slowly moved away to get pictures of other things. The deer stayed in the meadow.

You might think that deer wouldn't react like this, but these are city deer. They behave slightly different around here. If I had become too threatening, they probably would have run from me, but I was only after photos anyway. This wasn't the first time I've had a tense situation with a herd of deer in this park. But it was the first time the deer actually came to me to try to chase me away. I guess they really like their meadow very much.

The End?