Deer

I came home one day to find that my niece was being quite rowdy so I suggested that we take a ride in my little green Rabbit. She decided that that sounded like something to do, I don’t know if she thought it would be exciting or not but she was easily enough convinced that it would be good for a change. Just before we left I took my camera out of the car so that she being at the time a curious inquisitive little person could not play with it. I had no destination in mind but when we drove out of the lane I turned south. As we cruised down the big hill I asked, “would you like to go to the coulees?” Coulees, a valley perhaps a half mile wide and flat on the bottom and one hundred feet below the level of the prairies. The coulees to us meant the pasture lease. In Alberta there are four Special Areas huddled together in the east central part of the province between Consort and Medicine Hat. They are not municipalities; they do not have their own government, and much of the land in them is owned by the Crown and leased to the farmers and ranchers of the area. We were one of five neibours who together in the Watson Coulee Grazing Association leased five or six sections. There was a road of sorts that lead down to the bottom where a gate let us into our pasture.
Early summer, early in the evening, blue skies and beautiful scenery. What could be better? The trail that wound along following the stream was made by pick-up trucks but what’s that for a rabbit?
We bounced along for not more than a half mile when I said “look Jenice, a deer!”
It was grazing close to the trail by a big patch of hawthorn bushes. “Lets slow down and see how close we can get, you will have to sit still and be quiet, because the windows are open.” We crept up till we were opposite it where I stopped and turned the Rabbit off. I guess deer are used to rabbits, still you would think that the colour would give it away but it never even so much as looked up. We watched for fifteen minuets.
When it did finally look up it was facing straight toward us. It walked right up to the car, even Jenice froze. I could have scratched it behind the ear.
Can I prove it? No.
But James did have his camera one morning when we pulled away from home to go to work. “James,” I said “look what is walking down the street toward us!” It was a young deer. I stopped and it walked right up beside us but then a dog came along; the deer turned ran into a yard and disappeared over the back fence.
Yesterday when I was on my way to work I came up over a hill and saw a deer on the other side of the road. I slowed down and sure enough just as I came up to where it was it decided to cross in front of me. Right in frount of me.
This morning I got ready to go and went out the door letting the screen slam shut as usual but I shouldn’t have. Just across the lawn and on the other side of the road was a deer. It took off straight away from me and was gone in the flash of white tail. As I drove south I could see that it was very foggy up ahead. When I got to the corner to turn east it was most difficult to see if anything was comming from either direction. Up the hill I went into the sunshine and decended back into the fog. I knew that I was just about at the little lake so I slowed down till I was crawling along. Around the south side of the lake we curved expecting a deer anywhere along there. No deer. The other side of the lake the sun was shining bright and clear so I got up a good head of steam to make up for the slow time when up across the road went a deer. As I passed by it going down into the ditch I saw a second one was already there.
I like deer watching.