Having spent half of my life living on a farm, I love the outdoors and all of nature's creatures - as long as they stay out of my house. I can't tell you how excited I was when we moved into our new house 2 years ago and actually saw deer in the backyard the very first weekend. Although we have some woods behind us, this was an unexpected thing. Right then I knew we were in the right place. I got the best of both worlds...suburban life with some "farm-like" charm. Above is a video of deer in our backyard in July (I really need to practice more with the camera).
Having spent half of my life living on a farm, I am also familiar with hunting and the short life spans of some animals (particularly kittens that are born every spring, but never made it to the winter). My brother LOVES to hunt. It's the only reason this 16-yr-old will get up before dawn on a Saturday or Sunday. And he'll spend HOURS just sitting in a tree stand in the freezing cold all alone. Yet after 5 minutes in the house, he often exclaims, "I'm bored." I don't get it. Here's a recent picture of him with a box of deer meat from his latest kill.
So I'm on both sides of the fence. I love seeing the deer run through our backyard, the new babies in the spring, the bucks in the winter, and especially the reaction on Stella's face when she spots one. Although, she thinks they bark like a dog and barks when she sees them! I don't even mind when they come up to the house and eat out of my bird feeders. However, I also enjoy a good thing of deer sausage on a cracker with cheese during the holidays or the breakfast deer sausage with some eggs and toast. I guess in my head I separate out the "city" deer from the "country" deer. I worry about our city deer if I don't see them for awhile, but the country deer have to fend for themselves!
2 comments:
Argh. I hear you. I grew up in a place that has venison cook offs at the fair like most places have chili cook offs.
Every place I've lived has had an overabundance of some animal though. California was rabbits, Kentucky is squirrels, Rhode Island was Geese (by far the worst), and Wisconsin was deer. This overabundance justified peoples use of them for sport as they were constantly the cause of endless car insurance claims and the occasional plane crash on at the local airport. Deer are pretty, but they are by far less intelligent than the squirrels running around in my back yard that KNOW my dog will kill them. Being smart enough to have basic primal instincts they RUN AWAY. Geese on the other hand are EVIL, get to close and they will attack you in flocks, it's like an Alfred Hitchcock film but the birds are on steroids.
Deer on the other hand, despite having seen mom, uncle buck, and other relatives die in morbid car crashes insist on tempting the horrid death they so often find themselves in as they dart into the middle of the highway. You'd think a primal survival mechanism would have clicked sometime in the past 75 years but it hasn't.
But this doesn't stop me from feeling that peaceful feeling when I would see mama and her babies outside my window ever day and watch them grow up through the summer. I would feel guilty for intruding on their natural way of life for a moment with my car and my house. But within probably ten minutes I would most likely be on the highway headed somewhere, back in the real world.
It is what it is, a world of gray areas.
I hear ya Sarah! I have been in two car accidents with deer. My mom hit one and I was a passenger. The other one I hit myself head-on as it darted into the country road just before daylight on my way to high school. NOT FUN!! You would think they'd be smarter.
I will also say, I'm glad my brother eats all the animals he hunts and isn't just in it for the kill.
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