Oh Deer!
My parents live, let's say, rurally. That is, they have a barn, and farm vehicles and a canning shed and a larder and a deer feeder. Among other country-type things. They still live in the place where I grew up and though The Place, as it's called, has changed over the 20 years since I left home, you can still see remnants of my childhood. It's hard for my kids to wrap their little citified heads around the fact that I used to have horses, goats and chores. And even though I point out the fenced pasture (now overtaken by trees and salmonberries since the goat is gone) and the old water trough and what's left of my tree house, somehow I think my kids suspect I'm making the whole thing up. Every summer my kids and their cousins get together for Cousin Camp (more on that later) and get a very, very sanitized idea of what country life is all about. One day at Cousin Camp last week I slept out in the tent with them and I'd forgotten how LOUD nature is. I heard deer running around all night long, their little feet making a surprising amount of noise. At one point I sat up and looked out the mesh tent door to see two deer run right past within a foot of my cot. There was an occasional scampering sound that I'm going to chalk up to moles, but let's face it, it was probably mice scratching at the tent. I was awakened at dawn (or earlier?) by the excrutiatingly loud sound of dove wings. Hundreds of doves. And then, there were these guys.
And their mom:
They pretty much own the place.
Even my parents' cat likes to sit and watch them.
So cute and so neat that you could get so many photos of them. Will you do a painting of them?