No, don't give me that, it's spelled correctly.
more after the break.
While I don't think it's always been the same family (in one case I am 90% sure it isn't), for whatever reason the neighborhood white-tails have always particularly fond of my backyard.
They still are, those adorable Odocoileus virginianus Borealis
I know at least one of them frequented our yard for 2-3 years at the least (most of the average White-Tail's life), and she was a bucking badass.
I sadly have no pictures of her, but she had a leg that had been very clearly crippled by a car.
D:
This did not stop her from having at least 2 rounds of offspring, and at one point sleeping so often in the exact same spot that there was a dead patch in our lawn in the shape of her.
Sadly I haven't seen her in about a year, but since the average lifespan of a White-Tail is somewhere around 5 years, and she lived for a long time with A CRIPPLED FREAKING LEG, so if she's moved on to the hinterlands, she's damn well earned it.
Shine On, You Crazy Diamond. RIP.
ANYWAY BACK TO THE DEER THAT CURRENTLY LIVE HERE
The trending pattern with them around here is to generally just not give a flying buck about anything at all.
This is actually from June and halfway across town, but the principle holds.
The natural benefit to this is being able to get real close for pictures. I swear to whatever dark eldritch horror is up there that they look both ways before crossing the street around here. they are very aware of what is and isn't a threat. I think given time I could probably get close enough to pet one, but I'm not going to push my luck and ruin it.
chillin. like they do.
It's incredible to me, too, how quickly the fawns have grown. here's them on July 23rd~ish.
being tiny
and super adorable.
They've easily put on 10-20 pounds since then, and judging by relative weights, rate of spots disappearing, and total bullshit guesses, it would seem that there is one female and one male.
A shot of them today, from a relatively similar distance. not that the one on the right has less spots, even though they are the same age. it's also hard to tell, but he's the larger one.
Another thing to note here is that the family structure here is incredibly bizarre, if only for one big reason.
And That Reason is this guy.
Hard to tell from the quality of the pic (MY KINGDOM FOR A DSLR), but he's a pretty sizable buck.
The part that's strange is that he's stayed with the young. This is incredibly unusual. Males tend to be very solitary, and he is clearly well past the age where he is considered grown offspring who hasn't split from the mother. He leads the family around, in the way that the dominant doe of a herd would. while this seems sensible to us (it's like a little nuclear family), this is totally bizarre for White-tails, to the point where I'm having trouble finding any information on it anywhere. Normal behavior for White-Tailed Deer is for the buck to split from the mother once it is decently full-grown, and definitely does not grow antlers during the time it would be under the care of its mother.
Deer are Not Monogamous by any means. That this buck not only is around fawns, but seems incredibly loyal to the doe, is strange beyond belief.
[there was a video here originally, but it was borked so D: ]
All the same, I love it. No matter how shitty a day might go, if I see them around, I'm instantly all warm and fuzzy inside. Our backyard is already a strange little sanctuary for animals (more on that in a later post), but these guys are something else.
Stay golden, my fine ungulate friends.
Today's dazed phase is irrelevant, because happy deerfriend time.
