She was a real beauty and appeared to be lost standing in my driveway, looking
at me with those big brown eyes. I wondered if she needed directions, but
before I could inquire, she scampered into the neighbor’s yard and—with a
backward glance—disappeared into a small woodlot.
I have seen white-tailed deer in my yard before, but not very often and
usually late at night. Even
I suppose most of the animals I see are just passing through, like the
box turtles I have been seeing recently. Last week I had to stop my car while a
lady, whose own car was parked in the middle of the road, tried to coax a
turtle up and over the curb—without touching it. She carefully balanced the
turtle on the end of her shoe and tried to scoot it up into the grass, but it
kept slipping off of her foot. I was reaching for my door handle to go help her
when another person got out of his car and came to the rescue. As the line of
cars in both directions drove away, I wondered if the turtle would continue his
slow march to safety or whether he might turn around and drop right back into
the roadway.
I got a firsthand look at the problem the very next day when on my
morning walk, I found another box turtle with his nose pressed against the
curb and his front feet clawing at the concrete wall trying desperately to
climb into someone’s lawn. It wasn’t going to happen, so I carried him to a
nearby planted area and pointed him in the direction of the golf course. It
wasn’t ideal, but at least he would have a chance—unlike the turtle that fell
into my swimming pool a few days later. I had to scoop him out with the net.
And speaking of the swimming pool, what an animal trap that has turned
out to be. The squirrels have figured out how to dangle from the edge by their
hind legs and get a cool drink of water. Other critters like frogs, turtles,
lizards, and a few snakes aren’t as adaptable. Once they fall in, they are not
clever enough to find the ladder or the steps, even if that is how they entered
in the first place.
A few weeks ago I heard a frantic call from my wife, who had been out
for her afternoon swim. I rushed out and discovered that a baby armadillo had
been on the bottom step of the ladder getting a drink and lost his balance. As
humorous as it was to see an armadillo bobbing around in our swimming pool
(they are excellent swimmers, that is how they have expanded their range so
quickly), my wife grabbed the net and deposited him in the bushes with his
buddies and they went scampering off.
For the most part, I enjoy sharing my yard with the local wildlife But
every once in a while my patience is tested—like when the peaches disappeared
off of our tree. Last week, our small tree was so laden with a dozen or so
peaches that I had to place some boards under the branches to prop them up.
They were beautiful—fuzzy, reddish orange, and plump. They were a little on the
hard side so we were waiting for them to ripen. But we waited too long. A few
days ago, they disappeared—every last one of them.
“It was the deer,” my wife said. Her evidence was the nibbled leaves on
the branches that had once held the fruit—branches that were much too high off
the ground to have been eaten by a rabbit. But what had the deer done with the
peaches? Had she single-handedly eaten a dozen peaches, pits and all?
I don’t know what happened to the peaches, but everyone who knows my
wife knows how seriously she takes her garden. If that deer knows what’s good
for her, she will steer clear of my yard for a while. There’s a big, deep pond
in my back yard and if she falls in I might not be able to save her.
