anghara

We have a couple of rather past their sell-by date avocados in the kitchen. I've been throwing out apples and corn to the deer, but rdeck said, "You know, I LIKE avocado, but they need it more than me - see if the deer will eat it!"

So I tossed out an avocado, as an experiment.

Initially the couple of deer who came over sniffed at the new offering gingerly and then turned back and attacked the apples. They didn't seem certain as to what was required to deal with the avocado. But later on one of the deer came back and nosed out the avocado from under the snow. There was a little wrinkling of the nose, rather like a two-year-old who's been given spinach for the first time and isn't sure that this is an experience that he/she might want to actually repeat - but it's STILL only 20F out there, and food is food, and the deer finally figured it out and ate the avocado. I didn't see what it did with the pit, which is admittedly rather larger than anything one might discover inside an apple - but it went, the avocado.

I suppose, standing hock-deep in snow with more threatening to come down any moment now, they'll take what they can get. They prefer the apples, the corn - the familiar - but sometimes food is food...

(BTW - new icon - specially for winter deer posts...)

Not to come back to the subject of deer so soon, but I have to tell y'all this one. Momma and baby came back mid-morning, and then momma wandered away (presumably to catch up with errands)leaving the baby there outside my office where I could keep an eye on it. The baby ate some corn, and then settled down against the patio edge for a quick nap. Momma came back a bit later, the baby got up, they both scarfed some more of the corn, and then they went away.

A wild thing brought its child to me. I am lost in wonder.

It was nearly half past nine, and still light. We stepped out onto the deck with a glass of wine and sat in the twilight, listening to birdsong and the breeze stirring the trees. Somewhere out in our woods I could hear a persistent crackling noise, and I finally got up to go to the railing, glass of wine in hand, and have a look.

Down at the bottom of the garden, stepping lightly and delicately as though into a fairy tale, a young buck with antlers just beginning to branch and still velvet-soft emerged from the trees. He passed under our cedars, and then briefly out of sight... and then I could hear him making his way up the slope, towards the house. I leaned on the railing, keeping very still, waiting... and there he came, out of the darkness, shaped like a dream, and stopped for a moment, staring straight up at me out of huge dark eyes, his big ears turned towards me, listening for danger.

"It's okay," I whispered, "you're beautiful. Be welcome."

We stared at one another, this piece of the wild and me, and then I made him a little bow and left him in possession of the twilit forest. It was his, after all. My seeing him there had been a gift.

Good night, all.