Close Encounters of a Deer Kind

I almost passed on my evening walk with Patches. Denny and I played golf today and I was tired and stiff. However, Patches doesn't understand tired, so we left for our walk, leaving my camera behind. My mistake.

After wandering around the storage area and checking on the magic lily, we headed down into the dry creek, checking out Patches' favorite spot under the tree roots. As we headed upstream I was watching for spider webs blocking my path, as now I try to avoid them rather than breaking through them as I have in the past. Near a slight bend in the creek bed Ipaused while Patches did her nightly walk along the fallen tree and investigated all the wonderful smells around the old tree. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a slight movement about 100 feet up the creek bed and peered through the branches to see a doe watching us. Her white tail flipped furiously as she tried to see what manner of creature Patches was, and what I was going to do. I'm sure my
homemade insect repellent made of Avon's Skin So Soft oil and water confused her and we stood and stared at each other for a good five minutes. The doe wanted so desperately to check the nearby storm drain for water but Patches and I were too near for comfort. Finally the doe jumped up the bank and off into the woods and Patches and I continued to wander her way, figuring the deer was long gone.

As we got to another of Patches' stops, a burrow near the edge of the bank that is
open to the air from the erosion of the creek sides, I again caught a movement in the woods. The doe was back watching us and this time she stamped her right foreleg on the ground as if to intimidate us into leaving the area. When that didn't work, she made the strangest huffing/trumpeting noise through her noise and stamped her leg again. When three more trumpets and more stamping didn't frighten us away, the
doe bounded off deeper into the woods.

Returning home I told Denny about our experience and he said that chances were good that the doe had a pair of fawns with her in the woods (after the first year of
a single birth does then birth twins thereafter) and she was trying to scare Patches and I away from there. Wow, that would have been terrific and I would have been even more upset that I had left the camera behind. No more. That camera goes with me everywhere I go!