After my Gopher post on Friday, I was contemplating a clever tongue-in-cheek entry about the assortment of “wildlife” in our back yard.
You see, we live in a subdivision in a decreasingly rural setting, which limits wild creatures to decidedly smaller and less wild varieties.
In addition to gophers, rabbits are the most common, as are moles, some squirrels, an assortment of birds, toads, and even newts that appear every spring in a window-well.
Oh, yes, there was a neighbor who tangled with a skunk one night in his backyard, but that was years ago.
Although there are deer nearby—as evidenced by the road kill on a nearby thoroughfare—there has been nary a one in our built-up subdivision during the 20 years we have lived here. That is until last Saturday.
At noon, a swift-moving object caught my eye. There were two deer, only a few feet from our deck, skittishly darting across our back yard. They were in an understandable panic.
As my wife went for her camera, they made their way to our next-door neighbors and stopped short. Something spooked them and they did a 180 and then dashed between our houses towards the front.
My wife, camera in hand, heads towards the back of our house, as I move to the front. I’m stymied at providing effective location updates to her in a timely manner.
The deer leap through our front yard and across the street. My wife gets to the front door just as they duck behind that neighbor’s house.
As she’s looking out the front door, I’m at a different window watching them disappear behind the house next to that neighbor.
In a flash, they are gone. Even if I could have directed my wife to the right vantage point at the right time, I am sure that the resulting shot would have been little more that a blur of brown fur.
So lacking photographic evidence, you’ll need to just take my word for it.
I did see two deer, really I did.
Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.