Venturing out

Last night, in the old-age aftermath of Harvey - wind, rain, surf, but he destroyed nothing here as he did when a teenager in Texas - we saw something unique in our 22 years of watching. It was dusk, nearly night, and Cindy spotted him in the gloom just a few feet from the window. He was munching windfalls from the crab apple tree and occasionally stretching a beautiful neck to pick fruit right off the branches. Lord knows we see plenty of deer in the yard (10 of them one memorable, late-winter dawn) but they've always been does, or we've identified them as such. This was a young buck, judging by its small, teenage antlers. We crowded the window, staring intently for a few minutes, until he cleaned us out of apples and wandered off.

 A buck is no more gorgeous than a doe (but then I've never seen a mature male with a full set of antlers), so why the personal hoopla? It's because we never see males, I guess, and a rare thing is noteworthy. I also find it curious that he chose to come down from the woods on a stormy evening, as if assuming that any predators would be inside, oiling their rifles and planning for November.

Males of other species are not so skittishly smart. They'll drive right on into a flooded interstate.