https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL5FjvH3AJc
I can tell it must be hunting season in the nearby state forest. No, I don't hear any gunfire; the hunters are only allowed to use bows and arrows, at least that's been the rule for the last couple of years. I don't really know for sure if it's open season in the woods. I can only tell you that the deer sure as hell think it's hunting season.
Driving to work I am careening down a relatively well-traveled back road when I turn a corner and nearly get sideswiped by a huge doe. She's a beauty, and she's solid, an amazingly agile and meaty animal. I stop for a moment in the road (no one else is around), and watch her duck into the underbrush and stand up against a wooden fence, where she is trapped from moving any further. I look around and realize she must've trotted right up the nearby cul-de-sac like a four-legged jogger out for a morning run.
I'm still thinking about the doe later on when I drive home. I decide to take another side street, one that is well-traveled even though it abuts the state forest and the pond where I like to kayak. The exact moment when I recall the morning's deer encounter, another doe trots out right in front of my car.
Luckily, like this morning, no one else is coming. I stop the car and roll down the windows. I don't know why I do this. What's the deer going to do? Stick her head inside the window and greet me? I seriously think my gut reaction is to hear her, to listen to her move from the woods on one side of the road to the woods on the other.
No sooner do I watch her descend into the gully when another doe jumps out and practically over the hood of my car. She's a little smaller than the other one, and both are smaller than the beauty I encountered this morning. It seems like I am sitting in the road for a long time, but the entire encounter takes probably fifteen, maybe twenty, seconds. I see them safely into the bog, both moving slightly into the water among the reeds and branches.
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| (Not my picture; not my deer) |
Part of me worries that an errant arrow will come flying through the window and pierce my skull for interfering with what might be a hunter's pursuit; part of me cannot tear myself away from watching the two deer. A car comes along the other way, and I decide that I should probably keep moving, especially since I am within spitting distance of the state police barracks.
It's all right, though. It has been a three-doe commute today, and that's much better than my usual two-school-buses-and-some-traffic-lights commute. Reminds me why I live around here and not in the city.
